Month: April 2012

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Things I am excited about

1) The arrival (on my radar anyway) of a decent (I’ve seen some that leave something to be desired, let me tell you) knitting web comic – Worsted for Wear. It just started last fall, so it doesn’t take long to catch up reading it. Thanks to canadianchia for pointing it out to me.

2) The Toronto Edition of World Wide Knit in Public Day is now official and will be happening on Jun 9th.

3) The TTC Knitalong date for 2012 recently got announced. July 14th! Eagerly awaiting when registration starts 😀

4) The Knitter’s Frolic was this past weekend. Look what I scored!

The pattern, Shetland Trader/Homin Shawl by Gudrun Johnston is meant for the lovely lilac-hued, lace weight, made-in-Ontario Alpaca you see on the left.

At the top is some Malabrigo sock, but a close up is necessary in order to appreciate its range of purples. I unfortunately lost the label, but I think it is 854 Rayon Vert. There are touches of green in it, albeit hidden in this ball.

Next there is this recycled sari silk yarn:

If you’ve never heard of recycled sari yarn, a quick Google search will tell you more, though basically it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s different, and colourful and silk is apparently very insulating. I only got the one skein to try, so wrist warmers here I come!

And a close up of the alpaca is required, of course.

Soooo soft. I have no words. I cannot wait to cast on that shawl.

Also in the above photo are two buttons handmade in South Africa. I liked the antique look to them.

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I know I’ve been rebloging lately, but I’ve bee loving reading this vivid photographic journey through Peru focusing on it’s rich textile culture, so I had to share. The author’s company, LN|, sells items that are hand-knitted & hand-crocheted, in Belgium as well as in Peru. In her own words, “whereas in Belgium my beloved co-workers are grannies, in Peru they are young mothers who find themselves in difficult familial situations and rough living circumstances. There is a lot of unemployment in Ayacucho, making it difficult to create a good economy. That’s why good-cause organization Solid International, founded in 2000, tries to create employment and better living conditions by combining knowhow and experience from a team of experts. It has no use to just give money to the poor, which is in no means sustainable. Solid tries to find small employees to create employment, and so me, LN|, is one of them.”

Awesome, no?

LN|Knits's avatarLN|Knits

Finally, back to writing. We have been extremely busy these past few days. The busier, the better, so we like!

Let’s start off with day 16. Last Wednesday was the first day that me and Griet had to work apart from each other. Griet is namely not only here in order to take stunning pictures for LN|Andes and LN|Beanies, but also for Solid International. So in the morning she went to the ‘campo’, and I finally had some time to sit down and work. And so I did, in the sun, on the terrace, it’s not bad working here I must say!

In the afternoon I was hunting delicious pies since I wanted to do and bring something for my beloved young girls and elegant ladies. Armed with which I recon 4kg of Peruvian pie I headed towards DIA to participate in a second workshop and, of course, to…

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I need for an iPad edition of this to come out.

bissellbomber's avatarispy at the ischool

Once again a Bissell Bomber has been struck by the common cold and was 
out of commission for a few days. Sorry for the lack of posting, but all the syrups,
pills and tonics I was on made my keyboard a bit tricky to navigate.

I was also worried that I had started hallucinating when I saw that there was a yarn video game?!
Leave it to the fine people at Nintendo to make something that is already adorable
(a pink, squishy ball from Dream Land) and add an awesome yarn element!!

In this Wii Game, our hero eats some random tomatoe that he finds and is banished by the evil
sorcerer Yin-Yarn to Patch Land, a place made completely out of fabric.
In this new world Kirby’s ability to fly and swallow/copy enemies are useless
so instead he uses a whip to capture things and turn them into balls of yarn.

Kirby’s…

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Awesomeness that was March

It’s April now, and this was my April Fool’s ravatar:

As anyone on Ravelry knows, often the site developers will have fun on the holidays. Often it’s with little icons on the homepage, but for April Fool’s everyone’s avator got headgear. The placement of mine could not have been more perfect.

March was an interesting month, full of ups and downs. I spent St. Patty’s Day weekend at the hospital after taking my fiancé in for a marathon ER wait, followed by an ultrasound confirming that it was indeed his appendix, and then ultimately surgery and recovery. That same Sunday I found out that I was on strike. I spent almost two weeks bored-to-tears and foot-weary on the picket line while having to take over all chores at home with my partner in crime out of commission. Still doing most of the heavier-duty housework, but infinitely glad the strike is over.

That being said, it was also a great month in many ways. The strike was taxing, but I got to see some colleagues I had not seen in months because they work at other branches, and there was something invigorating in coming together with other passionate colleagues and members of the public to defend what we value. This was of course intensified at the Knit-In, which was a highlight and a wonderful time that could not have happened otherwise. Knitting really builds communities and connections!

And then the cherry on top for yours truly – meeting Wise Hilda and the Yarn Harlot 🙂 Additionally, the week before the appendix and the strike I got to meet another one of my favourite authors, George R.R. Martin (or GRRM, or his royal GRRMness, as a friend and fellow fan refers to him) at the Bay/Bloor Indigo store. I waited in line for 3 or 4 hours with a couple of other die-hard fan friends, which was fun on its own, and then we were each permitted to approach the dias (seriously, the stage combined with desk did have a dias-like quality, I’m not just being a fantasy nerd here).

I got my book signed, and he even talked to me! Swoon! Not that I was the only one, but it was nice, considering the size of the line and how fast staff were ushering us through, not to mention the size of the hand cramp he’d have later (I maintain that only those of us who have been reading his books since before the Game of Thrones HBO series count as fans, but I suppose they can’t turn people away based on this). Essentially our conversation went like this:

Me: Hi (I worry that this may have been more of squeak-like noise and not fully discernible)
GRRM: Hi, how are you?
Me: (completely flummoxed) Good, you? (then stupidly realizing he is spending his day signing a thousand-odd books) Erm, well, I guess you’re day is like this (I gesture towards my book as he signs it)
GRMM: He smiled at that, and said something like “well, yeah y’know.”

To conclude this foray into my nerd quirks outside of knitting, I leave you with this quote from and interview I found on Tumblr, because it is great and sums up part of the reason why I enjoy his books so much:

George Stroumboulopoulos: There’s one thing that’s interesting about your books. I noticed that you write women really well and really different. Where does that come from?
GRRM: You know, I’ve always considered women to be people.
 

March was also the month of awesome finds and purchases. I finally found a reasonably priced used copy of both Elizabeth Zimmerman’s The Opinionated Knitter and Barbara G. Walker’s Knitting From the Top. So stoked.

Don’t judge these books by their covers (especially the horrible duds on the 80’s edition of Walker’s book). This, my friends, is the good stuff. Basic garment construction in detail – no frills or fooling around here. Not that I dislike frills, but they come after mastering the basics, I think. And since I want to get into designing my own patterns, these two classic tomes are going to be invaluable.

Knitting From the Top comes from the genius of the same woman behind the classic and ever-so-popular Pattern Treasury books, à la:

What KFTP lacks in glossy photos it makes up for in sheer information value. You can essentially design and knit any type of garment using the tips and directions in this book, from every type of sweater imaginable to even a wide array of pants and skirts. (Though skirts I will definitely do, and have done, I think knitted pants is a dated concept. Granted, fashion always cycles back).

The Opinionated Knitter is essentially a collection of EZ’s Newsletters. She began to produce these after she starting her own yarn business from home, disillusioned with the world of mainstream pattern publishing and their insistence on altering, slicing, and dicing the patterns she submitted for publication. Each newsletter is reproduced in the book along with commentary and further expansion from EZ’s daughter Meg Swanson, as well as some from EZ herself. Topics vary – sometimes the focus will be on a specific technique, other times there will be directions (not patterns, an important distinction) for a specific type of garment. Below is an example of one of the newsletters and an accompanying diagram: this one outlines EZ’s key number percentage system for determining the number of stitches, increases, and decreases you will need for a sweater based on the wearer’s measurements. Amazing!

          

The back cover shows some of the photos from inside of garments made using EZ’s newsletters.

Part of what makes the book extra special for me is its coffee-table quality. In addition to the newsletters there are lots of anecdotes about Elizabeth’s life, including this amazing photo featuring both Elizabeth AND Barbara G. Walker (plus another lady I admittedly don’t know of) at a 1980 knitting summit! I know, I know, I’m a dork.

 

 

 

Speaking of Walker, did you know that she also wrote quite a lot of books on women’s spirituality and the Goddess movement? I didn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, March saw a fair bit of progress on the Lanesplitter, though not as much as I’d like.

Since this is the largest project I’ve tackled yet, my sock-size project bags were starting to just not cut it anymore. Being on a (partially strike induced, partially cause I should be buying less yarn) budget I figured I must have something around the house I can use. Enter this thin cotton grocery tote bag! Now that it’s altered, it is working perfectly. And as a bonus I’m feeling pretty pleased with my resourceful craftiness, thank you very much.

I wish I’d taken a before picture, but essentially I used a seam ripper to detach the handles (you can see where I did this to the left if you look carefully; it resembles an X), made a small cut in the hem around the bag opening and then hemmed around the cut so it wouldn’t fray. Threading the string through was probably the hardest part. Overall, an easy half hour job 🙂

 Happy Easter!