Facelifts

I admit that I have been lax about blogging these past few weeks (to the relief of many people, I am sure), but I haven't been doing much to blog about. It's spring!, and I've been futzing in my garden, which has been sorely neglected for the ten springs and summers I've been in Japan.

Outside of pruning and planting, I've made a few pairs of plain socks and sorted through my stash--lace yarn in this basket, sock yarn in that basket, and the "What chemical was I imbibing when I purchased this stuff?" yarn in a large plastic bag over there.

Some of the WCWIIWIPTS yarn was actually very nice, but the colors were either insipid or frightful.

..rustle...clank....out came the cauldron and Potions kit....

Here is a Before photo of Schaefer Andrea in the Louisa May Alcott colorway. I. Hate. Brown.



A flick of Chinese Fireball Red dragon scales...


I didn't much care for the green in the Andrea Helen Hayes colorway either.



A bit of Gillyweed and some Merpeople hair later...


Consultation with my Advanced Potions textbook allowed me to transform Fleece Artist's pale blue and yellow Cornflower colorway into something a bit more interesting:



And Fleece Artist's lackluster Saffron colorway was transformed into a spicier flavor:



I used potions with hues similar to the colors in the underlying yarn so I wouldn't end up with muddy colors. The process works surprisingly well, although I am still adding red to a particularly stubborn skein of ghastly beige Malabrigo laceweight in an effort to make it attractive. (It was billed as Peach, but the color I received bore no resemblance to either the on-line picture or the namesake).

One word of advice if you decide to try this at home. Do NOT add Eye of Newt to your potion mixture. Otherwise, you'll end up transforming your skein from a plain, but mainstream yarn:


Into something like this:*


A little vitreous humor (snicker).




*Actually, this incredible skein of handspun was created by the fabulously talented Jacey Boggs. You can find this yarn, as well as other amazing creations, at her web site: Insubordiknit.

Grumbles

I haven't done much productive knitting this week, but I have frogged what seems like an endless wad of samples. Every morning, I grabbed my coffee and some neatly caked sock yarn (thank you, Roy!) and spent several hours trying to find an appropriate yarn for a few favored patterns that have been in the Experimental Pile (some of them for years).

After seven days of this, I had a large pile of yarn squiggles and a headache.

What I really wanted was a soft, squooshy sock yarn with long runs of variegation. Well, guess what--there doesn't seem to be such a thing, at least on this planet.

Every pattern looked spectacular in the yarns I don't care to knit with--Trekking XXL, Julia's Vinca, and Noro's Brillo Kureyon Sock Yarn.

Every pattern got lost in the yarns I love to handle--Lisa Souza, Claudia, Cherry Tree Hill, and Soxie.

The basic problem seems to be that the yarns with glorious color variations are not very soft, and the touchable yarns were either too splotchy or zingless.

This conundrum also plagues lace yarn. The long-color-runs are found in yarns that are a bit harsh--JoJoLand's Melody, Yarn Place's Graceful, and Yarn Treehouse's Merino Print. And the touchable yarns--Yarn Place's Gentle,Touch, and Angel, for example, only come in plain colors.

While I am whining, I might as well utter a high-pitched plaintive cry about Angel's color selection. Take that, Yarn Place!

Don't get me wrong--plain colors are lovely and most appropriate for complex lace. But after you've seen LaceFreak's Legends of the Shetland Seas, you'll probably agree that those long color runs can transform a merely pleasant pattern into a spectacular finished piece.

In Other News
I did actually accomplish something this week. Hanabi is half-finished (I will post a picture next time.) And the Vinca yarn from Julia's Craft has turned into an interesting pair of socks. Total cost for the yarn was about $6--2 balls (@ $2.99, 255 yards) are needed for a pair. It's a slightly fuzzy marled yarn and a wee bit splitty.

As you can see, I made no attempt to match the coloration, being a dedicated lazy knitter. Roy says the yarn is quite light and soft on his feet. Knitting with Vinca isn't an overwhelming experience, but the color shifts are inspired, and make me want to keep knitting so I can see what will happen next.

Yarnival, December 15, 2007

Happy Holidays, everyone! I hope the next few weeks bring you delicious food, presents filled with knitterly happiness, and the stamina to face yet another year of casting on, frogging, and staring hopelessly at Internet pages crammed full of expensive yarn.

Some Yarnivals have themes, but I couldn't come up with brilliant, cohesive topic. Consequently, this Yarnival is basically a little bag of stocking stuffers. I had a wonderful time compiling these entries, and I do hope you have an equally entertaining time reading them.

Tooling Along

I read this incredible story a few months ago, and still can’t believe that anyone could be so driven to produce the perfect, complete, set of Hybrid Mutant Ninja Interchangeable Knitting Needles. I am profoundly envious--my father was a man of many talents, but he had trouble differentiating one end of a screwdriver from the other.

Most of us cherish Colourmart with their mouth-watering range of inexpensive cashmere, but the cones of yarn can be awkward to work with. Z’s Momma solves this problem by inventing an inexpensive cone holder and posted instructions on how to make one for about eight bucks.

Like many knitters, I tend to scratch directions, tips, and modifications into a little notebook, where they promptly lose themselves amidst a forest of similar scribblings. For those of us with less-than ideal note-making skills, Kathryn Ivy presents well-organized, handsome journal templates for both knitting and crochet.

One of the standard items in my knitting bag is a crochet hook—invaluable for picking up stitches, binding off, making picots and bobbles, and snaring little onions out of mixed drinks. Girl On The Rocks is never without one, thanks to her nifty keychain crochet hook.

Don't put away the needle-nosed pliers quite yet. After you've finished making the mini-hook, you can wander over to Turtle Girl's blog, where she shows you how to make a customized row counter, using a few beads and an hour’s work.

Like sewing? Have a disorganized straight needle collection? Craftster shows you how to convert a used hardback book into a handsome needle holder. She used an old physics textbook and the results are unquestionably unique. The fact that you cheerfully tear the book apart makes me wish I had saved my much-despised organic chemistry text from college. Who knew?

Hate sewing? Have a disorganized circular needle collection? Check out pieknits’ no-sew circular needle holder. It’s cute and easy to rig from empty thread spools. Of course, if you hate sewing, you might not have any empty thread spools...

Like sewing? Need something to hold your knitting and all the other stuff you just made? UHandbag shows you how to make a pop-open/spring shut 14” tote with a useful little accessory pocket.

Photographing your work, be it proto-kitting, knitting, or a finished piece, can be difficult. A lightbox makes it a lot easier to take accurate pictures of your stuff. Professional light boxes are expensive, but LollyKnittingAround explains how to make a portable lightbox for less than $20.

Strobist uses a similar light box and explains how to use it for taking exquisitely detailed macro photographs.

A Few How-To's

The Experimental Knitter gives us a new, simple, elastic cast-on particularly appropriate for Guernsey sweaters. Best of all, it doesn't require a long tail.

Now that you've cast on, perhaps you want to embellish the fabric a bit. FluffyKnitterDeb’s wonderful beading tutorial shows you how to easily add beads with a crochet hook, so you don’t have to string trillions of little tiny beady things before you actually start knitting.

BadCat also has a wonderful beading tutorial on the same topic, complete with clear, easy-to-follow instructions.

And if you have finally completed your fabulous shawl, well, somebody actually submitted one of my own posts! How could I not include it, seeing as how this is my Yarnival? My faithful readers will already have blasted past this entry. The rest of you (fleegle who?), especially those to whom grafting is either a mystery or a nightmare, can check out my incredibly frothy description of Grafting for Dummies, complete with visuals of goofing up.

If you have a teeny-tiny doily pattern you adore and want to see it Writ Really Large, The Doily Underground gives an exhaustive analysis of doily-to-afghan conversions.

And speaking of lace (but also applicable to any knitting), MimKnits has a superb set of lessons on directional decreases. She shows numerous examples of yarnover/decrease placement, so you can see the visual effects of the variations. And once you finish reading Part 1, do go through the rest of her tutorials. They are all terrific.

Those who read my blog will understand that Harry, the Giant Knitting Spider, couldn't help but contribute a post about mending webs with yarn. Harry was also thrilled with Nina Katchadourian's Advertising Kit for Spiders, which allows him to integrate ads for karaoke machines and spicy cocktail onions (his favorite snack food) into his remarkably sloppy web.

Great (and Not So Great) Yarns

Fiber Fool clearly spends a lot of time knitting socks, and she has written an excellent, detailed comparative review of eight popular sock yarns. The sample socks are a bit of eye-candy, too!

Want to recycle an old sweater? Neauveau tells you how here. Frogging can be fun, especially if you use your future ex's knitted clothing!

Tired of knitting with ordinary yarn? Yearning to dabble in new media? Knit some marzipan, for a change. The results are amazing! And edible! First check our VeganYumYum's incredible cupcakes here, then motor on to her how-to tutorial here.

If you don’t have a sweet tooth, be aware that Ramen noodles make a splendid substitute for yarn. Watch the video and entertain yourself and your friends the next time you are in a Ramen restaurant.

Entertainment

If you are bored at work (or anywhere, for that matter), you can indulge in a bit of Knitting Boggle, courtesy of The Purloined Letter.

Double Helix obviously spent a lot of time defining variations of the humble swatch. Her lexicon is hilarious.

There’s no pattern here, but as the wife of a retired police lieutenant, I did enjoy this bit of knitted eye-candy.

And finally, if you are getting older and grayer by the second, rejoice! Go Knit In Your Hat has designed the retirement community of your dreams: Purlin’ Acres. Please do not apply for a few months, while I work my application over. Frankly, I wouldn't mind moving there now.

I Dyed and Went to Heaven

Sometimes I start with a pattern, sometimes an idea. A few months ago, I had a picture in my mind of a warm, graceful, shawl in very pale blue, blue-green, and blue-violet. Although I shopped like a determined professional, I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, and finally admitted failure--I would have to dye the yarn myself.

I wanted something between, say, Zephyr and fingering weight, something luxuriously soft. After rummaging through my stash, I decided on Shakun's (a.k.a.China Cashmere) 2-ply silk/cashmere, mainly because I had a lot of it in white. (The reason why I suffer from an over-abundance of 2-ply silk/cashmere was explained in the previous post.)

I hate dying yarn. I hate the smell, the mess, the drippy, stringy, floppy skeins. However, I am well-acquainted with the process, having spent years studying color and dying--both natural and unnatural. Believe it or not, I used to crawl around the woods scraping lichen off woodsy objects and grinding poisonous little insects into red powder. After several years of this silliness, I threw Nature in the trash and invested in little bottles of premixed Jacquard dyes plus a nice set of food-coloring paste.

Being now forbidden to lift anything heavier than a grape (well, a bunch of grapes), I had to design a dying system that minimized neck stress.

It occurred to me that instead of using a heavy pot that had to be shlepped to the sink, the stove, the sink, the stove, ad nauseum, I could just use my twin stainless steel sinks and heat the water with an immersion coil. This concept worked out fantastically. I didn't have to lift anything but the yarn, and it was easy to push the skeins aside to drain the sink for soaking and rinsing.

I suspended the skeins on wooden thingies (parts of a Japanese embroidery frame, actually) and rested them on stacks of cat food cans (on the left) and a small cooler (on the right). I put the dye in the sink, raising and lowering the yarn by adding cans of cat food to the stack and situating the other end of the wooden bars on parts of the cooler.




When I had enough of one color, I raised the yarn, drained the sink, refilled with clear water, and added the next bit of dye.


Towards the end, I immersed all the skeins and added vinegar as a fixative, rinsed, and dried.


In the next post, you'll get to see this lovely stuff transforming into a warm, graceful shawl.

More Cheap Cashmere (Sorry!)

For several years, I have been buying 2-ply cashmere/silk from Shakun and for some reason, never thought to mention this company before. This particular yarn is the base for the much of the stuff you see in the US, for example, Jade Sapphire's Cashmere Silk. I've knit luxurious socks with it and just dyed some for my next project.

Shakun is also, apparently, the source for JoJoLand's lovely merino/cashmere sock yarn. Fortunately, Shakun sell it in white--the colorways are a bit unsubtle for my taste.

They has a teensy eBay store, which usually has one or two offerings a week and more recently, offer a website that struts their entire range of luxury yarns. They sell a wide variety of silks, cashmere, camel, soy, bamboo, mohair, and mixtures at very reasonable prices, but you must order a minimum of one pound of yarn. For example, two 2-ounce, 200-yard skeins of their 2-ply silk cashmere costs $12. I just checked the price of a dyed Jade Sapphire skein: those 4 ounces will set you back $33.

Buy yourself a pound of Shakun's for $48 and dye it yourself. I strongly suggest you request their catalog of knitting yarns, as well. Their 4-ply cashmere can be had in colors, most of which are, alas, rather garish.

Now, let's move on to their so-called weaving yarns. We would call them lace yarns, and I am sorry to tell you that they have every single combination of cashmere with or without silk, cotton, wool, and camel in any weight you might want. Some of them come in 72 colors. And you can create your own mixture and color to order. For example, if you just adore 65% cashmere, 25% silk, 10% camel in a 45/3 weight, you can request the mixture and have it custom-dyed, too.

The bad news is that the minimum order is 1 kilogram. I can't see that I would ever want 2.2 pounds of any of their lace yarns, but I urge those who are professional yarn dyers to check these folks out as suppliers. If there is such a thing as lace-yarn cooperative buying groups, they should also take note of Shakun's wares.

As is always the case, shipping will be expensive for small orders, so stock up!

A Gossamer Yarn Analysis

For those of you who tuned in late, a few days ago I knitted four swatches of gossamer yarns on size #0 needles and blocked them. I then examined them for visual appeal, as well as a flimsy/dense appearance.

I was rather surprised at the results, and, given the answers I received on the last blog post, you guys are going to be really surprised.

Here's the picture again.


And here are the answers:

Upper left: Heirloom Gossamer merino (48/2)
Upper right: Yarn Place Angel (48/3)
Bottom left: Yubina cashmere (45/3)
Bottom right: Colourmart cash/silk (45/3)

The Holy Grail Heirloom Gossamer Merino basically flunked this swatch test. Only 1 person picked it as the most visually appealing and 4 people thought it was the heaviest.

Thirteen people picked the Yubina cash/silk as the finest (only 2 people liked it best), but it has the exact same NM number (45/3) as the Colourmart cash/silk on the bottom right. Technically both the Yubina and Colourmart yarns are 30% heavier than Heirloom's Gossamer Merino.

Note: I had to calculate Yubina's number from the information given on their website, that is, 800 yards/50 grams. I teased apart the yarn and counted 3 plies, ending up with the 45/3 NM value.

Ten people, including myself, chose Colourmart's cash/silk as their favorite and 5 people thought it was the heaviest, probably because it is the fuzziest (and softest, too).

One person picked Yarn Place's Angel as the heaviest; 1 person thought it was the finest. Five people chose it as the most pleasing. It was definitely the most pleasing to knit--springy and forgiving. I wish Yarn Place would stock more shawl-appropriate colors. Would anyone knit a fine Shetland shawl in dark gray or tangerine? There's not even any white offered so you can dye it yourself.

Now for some more fun and games. Here's a list of the published yards/pound for each of these yarns:

Heirloom Gossamer Merino: 11811
Yarn Place Angel: 8423
Yubina cash/silk: 7264
Colourmart cash/silk: 7264

I whipped out my trusty McMorran balance, which let's you easily calculate the yards/pound of any yarn using just a small sample. (You can read about the balance here.) It is not the most precise tool in the universe--figure within 10% of true, although Siva Harding reports that she got accurate measurements by stretching the yarns slightly as she measured.

Here are my yards/pound results from the McMorran balance (I weighed all of these twice):

Heirloom Gossamer Merino: 9750
Yarn Place Angel: 8500
Yubina cash/silk: 7750
Colourmart cash/silk: 7000

And here are my conclusions (for what they are worth):

1. Apparent yarn weight is more a measure of how tightly the yarn is spun, rather than the published NM number. Both Yubina and Colourmart yarns are 45/3 cash/silk. The Yubina yarn is very tightly spun, the Colourmart yarn is much fluffier.

2. Visual and tactile appeal are more important than published NM numbers. Most people chose the visually heaviest yarn as their favorite and disliked the stringy appearance of the Yubina. (Clearly, the Yubina yarn is so thin that it would benefit, as one reader suggested, from being worked on a #00 needle.) I personally prefer less airy lace--I think the holes appear more prominent set into a dense background. Other folks want their lace as wispy as possible.

3. Yarn selection can start with publishing NM numbers, but the deciding factor shouldn't be how fine that number purports to be. Knit your swatches serially at one sitting and compare them. Decide which yarn you would most enjoy knitting and which one gives the most visually appealing appearance. Keep knitting swatches until the pleasantest knit also looks the bestest.

None of these yarns are for beginners, and even advanced lace knitters will find them a challenge. Before embarking on a hyper-complex shawl like Princess, please be sure you are choosing the right yarn for you. You'll be working with it for a long, long time.

The Princess Arrives!

If you have been waiting for the re-release of Heirloom Knitting's famous Princess shawl, you'll be happy to know that it's out and you can buy it here. Although the first release was a limited edition of 250, I could find no such restriction placed on Princess 2.0, so you can probably request it for a Christmas present. At $40, it's a bit expensive, but worth every penny.

Until the pattern actually arrives here and I can knit an actual sample repeat, I have to be content fooling around with yarn and needle combinations. And of course, there was plenty of fooling this weekend.

The Swatch Party gave me a chance to try out my brand-new KnitPicks Harmony needles. Whoops...one of them broke during swatching. I couldn't believe it--I mean, it's not like yarn this fine can put a strain on the wood. The tip just snapped clean off at the metal collar. In addition, they were so ugly--my goodness! Green, yellow, magenta--hideous with bright red yarn, loathsome with pink, and revolting with blue.

I did things a bit differently this time. I put all the Major Contenders--yarn and needles--on the table and knit the samples sequentially without stopping. This process gave me a better idea of which yarn really handled the best, and which needles were the most appropriate.

The results were a bit of a surprise to me, and might be to you, as well. Below are four of the worked samples, presented in grayscale only to eliminate color preferences. For two of these swatches, I ran out of sample yarn before I could finish the garter-stitch rows at the top of the pattern, so two of the samples are a bit shorter than the other two.



Here's the quiz. The samples range from 11,000 to 7,000 yards/pound, that is, the finest is a 48/2, the heaviest is a 45/3. Can you tell which is the finest and which is the heaviest?

And which one do you prefer visually?

Light Up Your Life!

Of course, then we would have to knit a battery-pack cover to power this yarn. The concept gives new meaning to the sentence: "That sweater is a turn-on!" Wonder how many colors it comes in.

Swatching for the Princess Shawl--Part III

Finally! My package from Yubina showed up yesterday, plastered with gaily colored stamps. Oh my. This stuff is fabulous.


On the left we have a ball of the gossamer cashmere silk and on the right, a ball of the cobweb cashmere.

And now, the swatch tests.

For comparison, I am including some of the previous swatches.

Swatch #1

Heirloom Knitting's Gossamer Merino
100% merino wool
10,800 meters/lb
Needle size used for swatch: 0



Pros: Lovely to knit, smooth, soft, and wonderful to touch. Blocks beautifully.
Cons: Comes in white, white, and white.

Swatch #2
Colourmart Cashmere Silk
65% Cashmere, 35% Silk
13,620 meters/pound (60/2)
Needle size used for swatch: 0


Pros: Comes in a huge range of colors, but you have to check their eBay store and website frequently if you are looking for a particular shade. Smooth, soft, blocks well.
Cons: We had several small spats while casting off. Picking up a dropped stitch was a lost cause.

Swatch #3
Heirloom Knitting's CashSilk
70% Cashmere / 30% Silk
11151 yards per pound
Needle size used for swatch: 0


Pros: Luxurious to touch, slightly glossy, available in five colors

Cons: Has a remarkable resemblance to sewing thread with about as much elasticity. Requires nerves of steel, 20/0 vision, and a body untouched by any stimulant that could cause even a minute tremor. Otherwise a pleasant knit :)


Swatch #4
Yubina Cashmere Silk
45% Cashmere / 55% Silk
7264 yards per pound
Needle size used for swatch: 0


This yarn is virtually perfect. It passed both the knitting-blindfolded test and the dropped stitch test. The droppee hung around while I fished for a crochet hook. It has a wonderful, slightly glossy appearance and is springy enough for my acrobatic decreases. And notice the lovely halo and crisp stitch definition. Unlike Colourmart cash/silk, Yubina's is soft and elastic to knit.

Although it calculates much heavier than the three samples above, the swatch was about the same size as the others (note the Colormart swatch sort of shrank from it's original blocked size). Here's a swatch comparison and a dime photo so you can see how thin the yarn actually is (click the fuzzy thumbnail for a clearer image).




As you can see, the Yubina is thinner and more tightly twisted than the unwashed Colourmart. The Yubina yarn knits up to about the same size swatch with excellent stitch definition and is far pleasanter to handle than Colourmart's yarn. I did a quick-and-dirty wraps per inch with Yubina and washed Colourmart. Yubina comes out at 58 wpi, Colourmart at 60 wpi. This is probably a more precise measure than yards/pound, but this is one case where you need to swatch yourself, I think, to get a good feel for the yarn weight.

I can't come up with a single criticism.

Pros: Exquisite feel, lively knit, slightly stretchy, blocks beautifully, available in 32 colors

Cons: Takes four weeks to get the stuff. No free bag of potato chips in the package.


Swatch #4
Yubina Cashmere
100% cashmere
4540 yards per pound
Needle size used for swatch: 1



Alas, although fabulous, it's way too heavy for Princess. However, it's perfect for any lace requiring a cobweb-weight yarn. I love knitting with it--it has a rich, creamy feel that's hard to describe, plus the same liveliness that characterizes Angel, Touch, and Gentle from Yarn Place. The yarn falls between Yarn Place's Angel and Gentle--a bit thicker than Touch. I first swatched it on size 0 needles, but the yarn just begged for a slightly larger needle size, so the swatch below was knit with a size 1 needle. The yarn has more body than those from Yarn Place--perhaps the cashmere is a bit denser?







Pros: Soft as goose down, slightly sproingy, blocks beautifully, available in 40 colors.
Cons: Takes 4 weeks to get the stuff. Diamond-studded vegetable peeler is not included.

The First Yubina Victim Surfaces

2Trees just received her biohazard-free yarn from Yubina. If you don't want to order any inexpensive cashmere and/or cashmere silk lace yarn of cheek-rubbing softness, don't go to her blog entry.

I am currently in England with no time to knit. The light in the room is dim enough for moles, too--the lamps apparently contain 11-watt bulbs. Not good for lace knitting, finding clothing items, etc.

Has anyone ever noticed that British English and American English use the same verbs but different nouns? For example, take the word "boot." The simple sentence "Put it in the boot." can engender a hilarious amount of confusion, as "boot" in this fair isle means the trunk of a car and not an item of footware.

Pretty in Pink

With all due respect to the designer, the Icelandic shawl was a yawner to knit. Fortunately, it's actually quite small when knitted with lace yarn, so the boredom didn't last long.




The yarn used, Richmore's Count 10 Color #103, is a variegated mohair with loooooong color runs. It was a truly luscious knit--the stuff is softer than Kidsilk Haze. Several folks have ordered some from Japan via Crescent. Treat yourself--it's fabulous stuff.

I am in my usual unsettled quandary about the next project. I swatched three different yarns for the Mediterranean shawl in Gathering of Lace and they all looked, well, meh. I guess I wasn't in a Mediterranean mood this morning. The shawl also requires a humongous amount of yarn--about 3600 yards--and I could see that I would be knitting it for years and years.

I will swatch for KnitSpot's Wings of The Moth and Goddess Knit's Desert Sun next.

Long ago, I had Lisa Souza dye some mohair very light Mother of Pearl. The visual result is a glittery white, but up close, the yarn is actually composed of very faint pastels. I had my eye on the Moth for this back then, and finally dug out the pattern this morning.

The picture of Desert Sun doesn't do it justice unless you are a brown fan.* The original one is shown in gold and it's lovely. I just happen to have two skeins of Claudia's Honey silk lace that would be perfect.


Looks like Milk and Honey to me! Well, Milk, Honey, and Harry, is a better description.

*In Japan, if someone asked me if I liked a particular brown yarn (or anything else), I would reply "Brown is not my favorite color." In America, I can express my opinion more directly: I loathe, despise, and abhor brown.

A Colorful Dilemma

I love handpainted yarns. I love lace yarns. I do not love handpainted lace yarns. In the skein, they are glorious. When knitted into lace, they often look, well, is ghastly too strong a word?

Now that the Icelandic shawl is finished (pix soon), I have been casting about for the next project. Of course, I had to scrutinize the current lace yarn offerings and I am sorry to report that virtually all the handpainted lace yarn I viewed this week is quite unsuitable for lace.

Let's take this exquisite shawl by Janice Kang as an example. Here it is knitted in dark hunter green.




And here it is knitted in a famous handpaint.

You can see a closeup picture of this stole on Janice's lovely blog. Unfortunately, it looks even worse in detail. The breathtaking effect of the pattern is totally annihilated by the wildly variegated yarn.

Here's another example of what doesn't work:


I acquired this design somewhere and couldn't discern the actual lace pattern until I Photoshopped the picture so the shawl was shaded as plain old black. It's very pretty, but you wouldn't know it from this picture.


Note: Both these patterns are available here.

For the past several years, handpainters have showered knitters with a colorful riot of sock yarns. But what works for socks does not work for lace. A cornucopia of rich color rarely looks bad in a sock. In a shawl, though, the results can be, um, confusing.

Lace can look lovely in a subtly variegated yarn. It also can look pretty with commercially printed yarns. For example, both my Swallowtail and my Icelandic shawls were knitted with the latter type of variegated yarns purchased in Japan. Yarn Place's Graceful and JoJoLand's Harmony lace yarns are two examples available in the U.S.. I've seen both knitted into lace, and the results are stunning. The long, gradual color blends produce quite a different effect from the short, abrupt flip-flops often seen with handpaints.

I have a drawer full of handpainted lace yarn destined for the black or dark blue dye pot. I learned my lesson and won't purchase any more of the wildly assorted color mixes, no matter how seductive they look in the skein.

If you are a handpaint artist and want to sell me lace yarn, you might want to tone down the palette. A lot. Store owners: I would be so grateful of you would seek out lace yarns that provide a bit of scintillation for the knitter without interfering with the actual pattern. You'll earn my heartfelt thanks, and I doubt I am the only lace knitter out there with a similar opinion.

Cool Greens

It's so hot and humid here that Harry has taken refuge in the refrigerator crisper and won't come out except to bulk up his stash (the laptop won't fit in the drawer). I guess being surrounded by lettuce 24/7 has an environmental effect, because when I opened his packages, this is what I found:


On top is a cone of laceweight cashmere/lurex from Colourmart destined, I'm told, for Triinu's Shawl. The huge skein of fuzz is Artyarn's Kid Mohair/Silk (cheap from Little Knits) is for the Bee shawl. And the three little skeins on top of the fuzz are Suri Silk, from Ocean Wind Knits, via Wool Girl. No specific project in mind for this last.

Do not go to Wool Girl if you are on a stash diet. On second thought, don't go to any of these places if you are on a stash diet.

I truly dread the thought that Harry might move to the sandwich section of the refrigerator. I really do not want to open a package and view yarn in the color of liverwurst.

And it's really annoying to open the fridge and be subjected to Guns 'N" Roses karaoke. (Thanks for the CD, Kyoko-san!)

Cashmere Yarn--Cheaper Than Wool

Two updates to this post:

I ordered a bit of cashmere/silk and will let you know if it's worth the price.

And I tuned into them last night to discover that you now have to buy $200 of yarn to get the winder. You folks probably drained them of their current stock :)

_________________________

I haven't ordered anything from Yubina, but if you want to make an 500-yard cashmere shawlette for $6.99 (plus $4.95 flat rate shipping), go here and graze. The usual price seems to be $9.99, but they are having a sale.

The prices are unbelievable and the lace yarn comes in 40 colors. They carry both 100% cashmere and a 45% cashmere, 50% silk blend ($9.99 for 50 grams/800 yards).

More goodies:

* Order over $100, you get a "yarn winding machine."
* On your third order, you get a 5% discount.
* Free samples.
* They carry merino sport and worsted weight yarn, too.

fleegle swoons with delight.

Lace Yarn Spreadsheet

The Lazy Knitter strikes again. I got so tired of looking up yardage, that I put together a spreadsheet of all the lace yarns I could think of. You can view the HTML version here and download the XLS version here.

If you have any additions or corrections, please let me know, and I will update the spreadsheet with new information.

17 rows left on the BWSK border!

Touch Lace Yarn from Yarn Place

In the frenzied excitement of swatching for the Princess shawl, I almost forgot about the skein of Touch that Jane had included in her goodie box to me.

Touch is lovely to both fondle and knit. It's soft and a bit silky, but still has the liveliness that characterizes knitables from the Yarn Place. The composition is a mix of 5% cashmere, 85% merino, and 10% Tencel. The Tencel contributes the silky feeling, cashmere the softness, and merino the springiness.

Left to right on the dime:
Heirloom Knitting Gossamer Merino
Angel
Touch

I made the swatch on #0 needles, but if I were going to actually knit lace with it, I would go with a size 2 needle. It's a bit heavier than than Gentle. Here's another dime shot:



And a little comparison chart:
Heirloom Knitting Gossamer Merino: 100% merino, 11811 yards/lb
Angel: 100% merino, 8423 yards/lb
Gentle: 5% cashmere 95% wool, 6265 yards/lb
Touch: 5% cashmere, 85% merino, 10% Tencel, 5811 yards/lb

I thought it actually felt a little finer to knit than Gentle, so you might want to take the yards/pound with a bit of salt. I'm sure that Wraps Per Inch are more accurate, but wrapping all these teeny tiny yarns around a WPI thingie will have to wait for that mythical time when I have alphabetized my stash, carefully arranged my needles in pristine order, and cleaned out the drawer in the kitchen with the ten-year-old catalogs.

Anyway, here's a swatch lineup:


My sample page shows Touch available in nine colors, including the regrettable Split Pea Soup shown here. Harry actually liked this color, which he dubbed "Grasshopper." No accounting for taste, I guess.

Gift From the Heart

I just received a touching (and touchable) box of lace yarns--both skeins and samples--from Lacefreak Jane. The package included an adorable tape measure, a handmade bookmark, and a lovely note that brought tears to my eyes.

I have never gotten such a heartfelt gift from anyone other than my husband, and I am just blown away by it.

Roy and I love to give gifts--we think it's fun to find things our friends might enjoy. But it occurred to me when I opened the box this morning, that we rarely ever receive gifts in return.

We never expect anything back from our giftees, you understand, but the fact that I received a gift came as a tsunami-style shock. Someone I have never met thought enough of me to (1) assemble a thoughtful, useful assortment of cool stuff and (2) actually send it via Express Mail to Japan.

Words cannot express. Thank you, Jane.

Of course, Harry, not being the least bit sentimental, immediately dragged everything into his light fixture for close examination. He did allow me to photograph the contents after I threatened him with a 250-watt light bulb (Hot!).


There were four skeins of lace yarn, a Shetland one-ply from Lacis, and three from Yarn Place: Touch, Heaven, and Angel. All feel exquisite and have enough yardage for useful garments, although I don't think I'll be making, say socks, out of the 1-ply cobweb.





This bookmark was handmade from waxed linen twine, hand-blown glass, etched shell, and carved wood:


On the cards are a variety of fine cashmere, silk, and a variegated wool, Graceful (Yarn Place).



A rate commodity here--a cow tape measure!


And, in case I get ambitious enough to wash anything, there was a collection of Soak.


Harry promises to swatch this weekend, so look forward to yet another round of teeny-tiny samples next week.

Forgotten Stash and Ordering Japanese Products

Sometimes it pays to do a little spring cleaning.

I was rummaging around my closet the other day, frantically searching for something that I completely forgot about when I discovered two balls of this:


Hmm.

I inspected the label. The yarn content is 55% mohair, 45% silk.

Rubbed it around my face. Felt like a goose down powder puff. More hmms.

Where did it come from, I wondered?

I spent some time wandering around the Yuzawaya website, and finally found it here.

Notice that there are 220 meters (240 yards) for 756 yen, or $6.20. With my Yuzawaya discount card, the price per ball is $5.58.

Now notice this.

Kidsilk Haze List Price: $13.50. 70% Super Kid mohair 30% Silk Approx. 227 yds/25g

Most Japanese yarns are pricier than their European counterparts, so it's a puzzler how a higher-quality mohair/silk blend can be found here at less than half the price of KSH. Parfait is much softer than KSH, too.

For those who would like to order this yarn, or any other Japanese product, please check out Crescent Trading. For a not-too-outrageous fee, they will place orders and send them on to you. All you need to do is supply specific information, a link, or a picture from a website, and they will do their best to find the product. Nice people!

And Parfait is still cheaper than KSH, even with Cresent's handling and mailing fee.

Swatching for the Princess Shawl

Harry surprised me this morning with not one, not two, but five finely knit swatches for Heirloom Knitting's Princess shawl. He managed almost all of them on Clover #0 bamboos--the loathsome joins weren't an issue, as the swatches were only 19 stitches wide.

These needles would be useless, however, for any project that required sliding the stitches over the join. Forget it. You'd spend more time tugging stitches over that sharp little barrier than you would actually knitting anything. Whoever designed these needles clearly never knit anything with them, never did any market research, and certainly never ran a finger over the finished product.

Swatch #1

Heirloom Knitting's Gossamer Merino
480m/20gm



Pros: Lovely to knit, smooth, soft, and wonderful to touch. Blocks beautifully.
Cons: Comes in white, white, and white.

Swatch #2
Avril's (Habu) Gossamer Merino
670 meters/oz, (48/2)


Pros: Comes in 23 pretty colors (mostly earthy browns and beiges) and the entire order will be wound on a cone, so you don't have to deal with joins.
Cons: Slightly sticky and splitty. Not as pleasant to work with as Heirloom Knitting's Gossamer Merino.

Swatch #3
Heirloom Knitting's CashSilk
70% Cashmere / 30% Silk
725m/25gm (2/58)


Pros: Luxurious to touch, slightly glossy, available in five colors

Cons: Has a remarkable resemblance to sewing thread with about as much elasticity. Requires nerves of steel, 20/0 vision, and a body untouched by any stimulant that could cause even a minute tremor. Otherwise a pleasant knit :)

Actually, it took three tries to produce this swatch. I cannot imagine trying to knit a shawl with it. Well, I can imagine it, but I think jogging from Tokyo to San Francisco would be easier.


Swatch #4

Moonrise Harmony
70% Alpaca and 20% Silk and 10% Cashmere
625 yards/oz, 2/32



Pros: A pleasure to knit--slightly springy, and luxuriously soft
Cons: Available in natural off-white only, shrinks vertically after blocking square.

Swatch #5:

Genuine Spider Silk

16 ounces will circle the Earth. You can figure out the Tex numbers yourselves.

Harry swatched this with #25X 0 needles in lime green, so we could find the sample to photograph. This sample is enlarged about five times actual size.


Pros: Produces a fabric so fine that the final shawl will fit through the eye of a #12 quilting needle. Comes in 175 colors and is inexpensive if you have a whole lot of production spiders in residence.
Cons: Quite sticky--we caught five gnats while blocking the swatch.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Well, more top-to-bottom, but you can see the relative sizes of the swatches and the yarns from these two photos. Click on the thumbnails for a less-blurry view.



Other Contenders
I would love to swatch Yarn Place's Heaven and Angel--I think these may be fine enough to enter the Princess Swatch contest. Unfortunately, I don't have any here, so the swatches will have to wait until I return home.

Ditto ColourMart cobweb yarns--I don't have any with me, but they always have cobweb cashmere and cashmere/silk yarns in stock.

Lastly, there are the skeined cobweb yarns offered by Skaska and Dimity. On the plus side, skeins can be easily dyed. On the other hand, winding them into usable balls would surely make Job yearn wistfully for whale tummies (mixed reference here, yeah yeah, Jonah was the one in the whale). I have some of both and they are resting comfortably 8000 miles away.

Nuts to Knots

As I creep my way up the chart for the Black Widow Spider King, I have been encountering Too Many Knots in my balls of Gentle. The other day I was finding a knot about every other row. As I was almost at the end of the ball, I decided to start the second ball I brought with me. Now I am encountering knots every row.

I can understand one or two knots per ball, but this is becoming ridiculous. Not much I can do about it but grit my teeth, because first, I don't have any more black Gentle here. Second, Yarn Place's web site has been a mess for months. You can't order anything, even if you could find what you want amidst the weird slide show thing that now passes for a "store." And third, even if I could order more and have it shipped to Japan, it won't be the same dye lot.

If I continue to encounter more knots, I am afraid that I will be unrecommending this stuff for anything more than swatches.