18 more days to Halloween

I just got an email from PolarKnit advertising their free Halloween themedpatterns on-line and was intrigued.

Before going any further, here is the link so you can start planning right away.

I saw the PolarKnit yarns at the recent trade show that I attended and loved the feel of it. It is made of actual polar fleece and comes in good colours and is nice to knit with.


BUT... Why didn't I bring it in?

This brings up a topic that actually came up in conversation earlier today: what are the criteria that we use in choosing a particular company to deal with or a specific yarn?

Generally, I use a series of questions that I ask myself, the first of which revolve around ease and dependability: Is this a company that I can rely on to deliver enough yarn on time? Do my regular suppliers have something comparable that I can include in my regular orders? Does the shipping from its place of origin cause me any issues? PolarKnit appeared to be okay in these respects although the representative wasn't actually there to ask questions of, so that made me a bit nervous.

The second batch of questions are more customer centered: Will my customers be able to work well with this yarn? Will it inspire project ideas for them? Will they recognize its value in relation to the price? And there I found the elements that made me pass up this yarn for this year, anyway. I'm sure that PolarKnit is a great yarn to work with; I'm a fan of polar fleece, why not in a yarn? But because of its very special composition, I guess, it makes it really expensive, especially considering the yardage that is in each ball. For that price, I want it to be REALLY special.

The other issue is that for some reason, they consider 12 stitches over 4 inches to be a Chunky weight and 16 stitches to be a Worsted Weight. This is much heavier than any other yarn on the market. It would drive a knitter crazy to get all set up with their yarn and a "chunky" pattern only to realize that they would need much more yarn than they expected AND they would have a terrible time trying to achieve a typical chunky gauge.

All this to say that each LYS has a different focus and set of criteria when choosing yarns. Each shop owner has their own priorities, preferences and penchants in style. I'm sure that PolarKnit yarns will find a good and happy home in many stores. It just occured to me that readers would probably find it interesting as an exercise, to hear a bit about why some yarns that I see make it in to my store and some don't.

I was however so pleased with the fun patterns like the one above and this skull beanie, both available as free downloads, but I do advise customers to be very careful and look at the pattern gauges closely before choosing a yarn, or 18 days won't be enough time to knit it twice to get the right size!

Having "Fun" with the Solution Sweater.

This is the story, in point form, of the sweater that I've made for my brother's 50th birthday. I call it the Solution Sweater as my way of seeing it as a wonderful learning experience redefining all of the interesting challenges that this darn thing has presented, and the solutions that were handed to me along the way.

1.About 2 years ago, I had chosen and put aside a gorgeous discontinued brown Noro Aran weight yarn for this purpose. Anthony, the brother in question, mentioned that he always wanted a green Aran sweater. Solution: Alternate the chosen brown yarn with rich green Manos del Uruguay. It looks great...just like the forests of Vancouver Island where he lives.

2. A hood, said he. I'd really like a hood. Or maybe not. Could you make it with a hood that can come off?

3. Sure, said I. Solution: a hood with a series of small buttons around the bottom that can fit in the holes on the inside of a double neck band.

4. Oh, said I. You'll have to have a zipper at the neck or it will look like a little kid's hoodie. (As I'm saying this, I realize that if the zipper is worn open it will show the tacky inside of the zipper.) Solution: Make a second band on the inside of the sweater and slide the zipper between the 2 layers. Picture at left.

5. Make a swatch to check for colours and designa compatibility. This next picture is proof that I did a swatch last December. (Check my Flickr account. I really did do this swatch before beginning.) More about this later.

6. Knit 2 sleeves to make sure that tension is really okay. Sleeves come out fine. More about this later.

7. (Full disclosure, and a little bit of a spoiler alert: I did get some help here from one of my knitters to do the back with armhole shaping to accomodate a set-in drop sleeve, according to my directions. Also had her do the front to the zipper opening and armhole shaping.)

8. Picked up and finished the front to include the zip opening but forgetting that the back had armhole shaping. Solution: Rip back the back of the sweater to the armhole shaping which is then redone to match the front. (I was not about to do all that front neck shaping again.)

9. Design hood. Knit part of hood. Run out of green yarn. Solution: Find that the emerald green of Topsy Farm's wool is almost exactly the same colour, if a bit thinner. It's okay for the bit that I have left.

10. Sew the sleeves in. Discover that the sleeves have a depth of 8". For those of you who sensibly rely on patterns, 8" is the sleeve width of a fine lady's sweater. A man's jacket type sweater needs at least 10". (You do remember that I made and measured the sleeves in step 6 and they were fine when I made them.) Solution: If you look carefully just below the little red line triangle of the blocking board on the picture here, you will see a band of knitting where the stripes are going perpendicular to the rest of the sleeve. (we'll call it a design feature of some great ingenuity and importance to the integrity of the entire piece). These are bands of short rows that I picked up along the inside of the arm on each side to add the missing couple of inches.

11. While knitting these bands, finish the skein of brown yarn that I wound a couple of weeks ago. Go to the stash and retrieve another, knowing that because this was the original yarn that I intended for the entire sweater, there was plenty. This is a picture of the first of 7 skeins of the beautiful Noro yarn that was destroyed by mice and/or moths over the past 2 weeks. Solution: Turn blue while holding my breath as I examine the 8th and last skein of the yarn. Silent prayers to the knitting gods are answered; the last skein is intact.

12. Sew the sleeve extensions and side seams. Lay the hoodless sweater on the floor to admire the rough beauty of a finished garment before it's blocked. Try to ignore the nagging optical illusion that makes it appear to be smaller than I expected it to be.

13. Flatten out the sweater and measure one last time to reassure myself. Scream. (Remember the swatch from step 5?) Breathe deeply and remind myself that the evil knitting gremlins could not possibly have stolen an inch from each side of the sweater, making it 4 inches smaller in total than it had been when I measured the pieces before sewing them together. This is simply not possible. Solution: Put the whole thing away until the morning when I get up and soak it in a bath of water and Eucalan (to relax the fibres) and block it on the board to the exact size.

14. I am planning on sewing the buttons to the hood tomorrow and HOPE that the idea works and that the effect is a good one. I'll let you know.

All this to say that despite the ...INTERESTING...aspects to this project, I've really enjoyed it as it has given me a chance to "build" a proper sweater from the beginning, refining some of the skills that might have gotten a bit rusty lately and learning as I go along. Meanwhile here are a couple of pictures that also show how nicely the colours work together and how the corrugated ribbing from the bottom of the sweater worked to tie in the blended colours.

I'll hang the finished piece at the store until mid November when the birthday guy comes to town. All in all...it was a lot of FUN.

How to have fun - Part 1

Over the past few weeks I've been both surprised and delighted at how fun my life is lately.
It could possibly be that I've been reading Eat, Pray, Love and the author's life swings from such desperation to elation that I'm just glad to be little old me having a good time.

The first opportunity that I had to notice how much fun I've been having was when I found myself at the "Knit Trade" Show organized by the ladies at Cabin Fever, where LYS owners were invited to meet with smallish yarn/knitting related product companies who wouldn't have the opportunity to visit all the stores.

Here is some of the fun stuff that I got, much of which came from the booth with the dynamic pair of dye divas from Dye Version.

I had made a small note to myself before going to the show that I wanted to check out the price of their bamboo/lycra sock yarn as it seemed like something new that I thought would work well in my store. WELL, was I dumbfounded when I saw their line up...And I have the MasterCard receipt and the products in my store to prove it.

Not only did I come away with a good selection of the Bamboo/lycra sock yarn (in amazing colours), but I also picked up 2 other lines: their fingering weight 100% bamboo which runs through your fingers like water, and the most amazing sock yarn that we have ever carried, being a gloriously hand dyed blend of merino wool, silk, nylon and (wait for it...) sterling SILVER filament.

Honestly, the Dye Version ladies said that they hadn't actually heard of anyone who really made a pair of socks with this to-die-for yarn, but with the nylon content I guess it would work...but who would want to? You would end up walking out into traffic, while lifting your pants above your ankles so you could watch the silver flecks and the colours as they moved in the sunlight.

I also brought back a whole pile of other fun things including knitting key chains, glittery mohair, and oodles of books and 2011 calendars. COme on in and check them out.

Later that evening I got to spend the night with my daughter and her new "J-ug" (being a Jack Russel, Pug cross) puppy, Zoe. I was also introduced to the indescribable joyful cuteness of an urban park full of dogs and puppies of every shape and size, congregating for a good old fashioned run and fetch. It doesn't get much more fun than that.

In Part 2 and 3 of these How to have fun posts, I will discuss the joys of teaching a class of lovely ladies who absolutely want to learn what I have to teach them about toe-up socks, and my experience with the Solution Sweater that I'm making for my brother's 50th birthday. I call it the Solution Sweater as during its creation I was presented with a whole series of challenges, problems and mistakes to be fixed (without resorting to starting over from scratch) and the solutions to these dilemmas were Eureka provoking and thankfully received.

Meanwhile, fall always makes us happy at the yarn store. Lots of new products, lots of new and returning customers, lots of work to keep us out of trouble.

Life is fun.

More later.

Meet Perri Klass

"I love to knit, I love to read, and I love to read about knitting." Perri Klass

That statement only begins to cover the things about which Perri Klass is passionate. I'm sure that many of you know her name but for those who haven't run into her in print, I'll list the "hats" she wears that I can identify in just a few minutes on the internet:

Pediatrician, professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University, literacy advocate, regular columnist in Knitter's Magazine, knitwear designer, writer of knitting books many articles and papers and books in any of the above fields plus pieces on travel and food topics to boot. AND she has 3 kids of her own!

Well imagine my surprise when I was going through the stacks of the library recently and came upon her recent non-knitting, non-medical, non-literacy related NOVEL. I think that I just saw her as a regular SuperWoman before but finding this book: The Mercy Rule, which I believe is her first real work of fiction, really hit home and made me ask with a true sense of exasperation: How Does She Do It?

I know the hours it takes to slog through the multiple drafts of 250 pages of fiction, when 5:30am is considered sleeping in. It took me the better part of 3 years and I only had 1 job! Does this woman never sleep? Is she like Hermione Granger who experimented with time shifting in order to accomplish all she needed to do during one year at Hogwarts Academy of Magic?

Maybe they should make a Movie of the Week of her life, or more likely an HBO series as no one could cram all the things that she excells in during a 2 hour movie.

Check out her website and see if you just can't tell from the tone of her knitting articles and by the arenas where her life has taken her, that she has just got to be a really nice person too.

Having begun this post with a quotation from the internet, I shall close the same way and you can picture me sitting tall at my computer desk, secure in the knowledge that if it hadn't been for all the time that I wasted with my head in the toilet bowl during 3 x 9 months of morning sickness that I too could have accomplished as much...NOT!

"She (Perri Klass) also wrote, in the New York Times Magazine, about the experience of having a baby while in medical school" Wikipedia

Made it through the first week of school.

I've been out of the school teaching business for 14 years now. My youngest "child" is in 3rd year University. The only real connection that I have to the ebb and flow of the scolastic year is in the school bus's return to pick up the kids next door. Yet every year I still walk through those first few days after Labour Day with a fondness, excitement and sense of relief at the approach of that first Friday which signals the end of the first week.

I've been pondering memories of my own student days, remembering the grade 7 teacher that I had who taught us, literally next to nothing in the entire year, except how to knit a spiral hat much like this one that I found on the net.

Now you can imagine that although she was no Socrates, that woman was to be commended for her attempt to have 30 12 year-old girls of varying levels of dexterity, interest, hormonal upheaval, and ability actually complete what I now recognize to be a relatively intricate pattern. For the first time in my life, I realize what a gift that teacher gave me and how much I learned about math and its relationship to structure in general and the construction of knitting designs in particular, never mind that I spent the year focused on how much work we were avoiding by knitting for a good portion of every day.

Having spent last week touching down mentally into the schoolyards of my past, I was delighted to receive this video link by email from my sister. I have declared it to be my favourite music video of all time (for this week anyway.) Kristin Andreassen's Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes.

I absolutely challenge you to watch it and see if you aren't humming the tune for the rest of the day, feeling a lot more hopeful about the future of our world, and harbouring the coziest memories of wonderful teachers that you have had in your past. (I wanted to run away and join her that grade 2 class).

Such Role Models

Next Sunday, the store will have its 14th birthday.

One of the very best gifts that I've received during those years has been to observewhat it means to grow older for many different people.

We all grow older, some people just do a better job of it than others. Aside from having a really good example in my parents about how important it is to take care of yourself, to stay active and keep connected with friends, I've learned so much from the people that I see every day, month in and month out, year after year, who change as we all do with the passage of time but never seem to lose that spark that keeps them learning and interested in life around them.

A friend of mine from the Tai Chi days and who is now a good customer was in to the store today telling me about the trip to the north where she had been with her parents who are pictured here: Don and Katy Lou McLauchlan. Don was an RCMP officer in the north for decades but had spent 3 years in the tiny centre of Aklavik, which was celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The interesting thing is that Don himself is only 2 years younger than the community.

Yes, that's right. Don at 98 and Katy Lou at 92 made the trek to the high north this summer to help celebrate. This would be quite a trip under any circumstances for these folks but it's important to note that Aklavik has no hotel, B&B, restaurants, roads, telephones...nothing of what might make one feel a bit more comfortable in our southern ways.

Read all about the trip and some of Don's recollections here and think about some of the amazing elders that we have among us. I know I feel so priveleged to be surrounded on a daily basis by people of all ages who are such great examples of living and learning.

Oops

I received an email recently of this picture along with several other examples of humans being taken advantage of by animals.
It really is quite a funny series and I thought that my oldest daughter would get a kick out of the pictures as she is presently working for a Humane Society as an animal protection officer.

Her response to my email was as follows:
It says a lot about my upbringing when I see buddy at the end getting knocked out by a kangaroo and one of my first thoughts is “nice Aran sweater”.

I guess my children were a bit more immersed in the beauty of handknits than many others would be.