WIP Wednesday - Mean Tangerine Infinity or Cowl

You might remember my post "Which comes first, the yarn or the pattern?" posted on October 8. Well, I have begun work on what I think will be a cowl in the gorgeous yarn I purchased at the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitter's Fair.

As I mentioned, the yarn is 100% Merino in a gorgeous variegation of oranges that just sing with happiness. After trying two different patterns and not liking either one, I decided to try a test swatch of a stitch I quite liked, called Tweed Stitch.

So, I knit up a test swatch on the needles I'll be using to make this lovely scarf to figure out the gauge and ensure I have adequate yardage to complete the project.

My test swatch sitting atop the photo of this glorious stitch pattern. Isn't it pretty?

I know I've made the right choice because I'm absolutely loving how this stitch is working with my yarn! A perfect balance of interesting stitch and gorgeous yarn.

After I did my test swatch, I figured out number of stitches per inch, tore out the swatch, measured the number of yards, and worked out how long and wide I could make this scarf based on that information.

Who knew I'd need arithmetic after all these years!?!

So now I've cast on the number of stitches I think I'll need and begun knitting what should be an infinity scarf . . . assuming my arithmetic is correct. I'll just have to see how it works out! I'll share soon on an upcoming FO Friday post. 

WIP Wednesday - What to do next?

I don't actually have a work in process right now. And neither does Shelagh. And we don't like it. But I thought this might be interesting to write about: how do we decide what to work on next? 

For me it starts with the yarn. Sometimes I look at my stash--or my sister's stash!--and fall in love with a particular yarn all over again. That rush of excitement when I look at the colour and feel the squooshy texture and I remember why I bought the yarn. I have a couple of cakes of yarn that do that for me and the one I'm looking at right now is "Mean Tangerine," a sport-weight yarn by Waterloo Wools I purchased at the KW Knitter's Fair back in September.

Mean Tangerine is 100% Blue-faced Leicester (BFL) wool yarn in a wonderfully happy variegation of oranges. It's so bright and cheerful--and so unlike my usual preference for blues and greens. When I saw it, I absolutely had to have it. I know I want a pattern that will show off the beautiful shades of orange and I think a simple stitch pattern will do the trick. Oh, and I have 250 yards.

For me, and I think I speak for Shelagh too, the process is falling in love with the yarn and then looking for a pattern that will highlight it. We have been purchasing a lot of artisanal yarns lately, yarns spun and/or dyed by very creative women, and I--we--want to continue that creative vision by choosing exactly the right pattern.

So far I've tried two different scarf patterns, knit about 1-1/2" and simply knew each one wasn't working. Ugh.

I did look for more patterns online and in magazines, but I just couldn't find something I liked. So I started looking through my Stitch Guide. This is a handy and really inspiring little book. It's so inspiring that I sometimes get carried away and start thinking of other yarns when I look at some stitches. And sometimes that isn't good because I feel like I'm cheating on my current project or yarn. Is that weird?

My cake of Mean Tangerine on my Stitch Guide. What you don't see are all the flagged pages for stitches and yarns!

So, I have found a beautiful stitch that I think will show off the various orange colours of this yarn. Next step: test swatch and working out the number of stitches and rows and creating my own pattern. Send your positive vibes my way: I'm hoping third time is the charm!

FO Friday - Colorflo Shawl

This year Shelagh and I visited the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitters' Fair for the first time. This wonderful fair has been organized by the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitters' Guild for over 20 years. The Fair is amazing because it gives knitters a chance to see small-ish vendors, artisan spinners and dyers whose yarns are mostly available online and not in yarn stores (or only in a few stores). It really offered a diverse variety of yarns and all things knitting related. And I have no idea how we hadn't heard of it before!

A few weeks before the the Fair, Shelagh and I checked out the various vendors' websites and prioritized those we wanted to visit. So, when we arrived at the site, we headed straight to the vendors we most wanted to see. And, yes, we did buy from some of them! But we'll save those for later posts. 

After visiting our top priority vendors, we wandered to look at everyone else.

That's when we stumbled on sweaterkits. They had beautiful yarns and yarn/pattern kits. I fell in love with the Mulberry silk cakes: gorgeous colour combinations, so it was difficult to choose one. But I decided on the cake made up of purples and blues. Gorgeous! And the accompanying pattern looked quite straightforward.

I started knitting right away. The silk felt wonderful in my hands and the shawl took shape very quickly.

The cool part about this yarn is that the artisan dyer who created it figured out how to dye 300 yards of yarn in five different colours! The result is that you follow the pattern and don't have to switch skeins for the different colours--which means only two ends to weave in when done. Plus, the following the pattern means it colour blocks naturally.

It was quite thrilling to watch the colours and pattern appear while I knit.

I knit the pattern in about a week. I didn't knit constantly, but I did knit some of it every day. I loved getting to the lace edge part of the pattern, too. Very easy and so pretty in those last colours.

I've blocked it and will be photographing it shortly for selling in our shop. I'm really in love with this one. Oh, who am I kidding? I love everything I knit!