taken while searching for noon-time food

Jess asked if i could talk more about Beaverslide Dry Goods Wool. Yup, i sure can.

I originally bought their worsted weight 90% Wool / 10% Mohair for an aran sweater. Not knowing exactly how much i would need, i bought 12 skeins or so (it was on sale! as it is right now if you look). I may have been perhaps a bit overly concerned about running out of yarn. In any case, the aran of my own design did not pan out and then the irregular rib came along, SOP wanted a black sweater and well, the yarn seemed perfect. I still have enough for a sweater for me, btw.

The charcoal lot i bought has tiny flecks of teal in it every so often. It has very slight variations in thickness occasionally, but nothing overly distracting to me. It is very soft and i would say that the only detraction has been that some skeins have quite a few knots and, maybe my spit is low on enzymes, i have a hard time spit splicing. The yarn doesn’t have a lot of sheen (Brown Sheep Wool has a distinctive sheen to me), but has a soft feel.

I also bought 6 skeins of their all-natural, chemical- and dye-free yarn in dark heather grey. I’m using that right now to make the Celtic Dreams Aran. It is not as soft off the skein as the dyed, but it is not rough either and it softens with washing. It seems to have a more consistent thickness than the dyed yarn as well. I’ve had 2 knots in the first skein so far, we’ll see how the rest are. The yarn looks to hold the pattern well, though and i think it will be a good match for this sweater.

Beaverslide has color cards you can order as well. They have expanded their line considerably since i made my last purchase and i am very much tempted by their all-natural black. Their service has been wonderful every time i’ve bought and i will be buying from them again.

So, those are my comments. For a more technical perspective from someone who actually knows what they are talking about, you might want to read Clara Parkes’ review in at Knitter’s Review Magazine

EDIT: Alexandra commented that she was afraid of the itch of mohair in the 90/10 yarn. I have to say it is much softer than other mohair-blend yarns i’ve tried – Brown Sheep, for example. In fact, i wouldn’t have really noticed the mohair in it myself.

starting on the next knitting project, a pattern i drooled over for many months before deciding to go for it: celtic dreams by beth brown-reinsel. One of the first things i had to do in this pattern was pick up 28 stitches along 5-inch knitted shoulder saddles. For some reason, i was having a lot of problems with this, ending up with too many stitches or not enough. After some swearing and growling, i finally used my head and divided the 5 inches into four as follows.
fold in half, mark, then fold each half and mark as well:

measure to make sure the pins are at the quarter points (you could just do this from the get-go and forget the folding stuff, but i liked the picture)

bite-sized portions

hope that helps anyone who hadn’t already thought of that.

more than a week after ‘finishing’ the irregular-rib raglan sweater, the toggle is done and sewn on, meaning:

the irregular-rib raglan is DONE!

first, a close-up of the toggle, hand made by sop and me:

blood wood toggle , leather from scraps bought at the local leather shop

sop seems fairly happy with it:

although i do think he might have studied the poses in the book a bit too ardently:

sans lipstick at least

Final notes:
Pattern: Irregular Rib Raglan from loop-d-loop
Yarn: Beaverslide Dry Goods wool in charcoal
Needles: Addi Turbos (i normally use bamboo), size 4.5mm
Modifications: 1) I didn’t bind off the armholes, i kept the stitches live for later grafting (anyone know why this isn’t a good idea?). 2) I cast on the sleeves and body with a 4mm needle and knit the first 3 inches at that size to tighten up those edges a bit. 3) Hand-made toggle. Relatively easy, but had sop asked me to remove it afterwards, well, things could have gotten ugly.
What i learned: I finally ‘got’ right and left decreases to the point of knowing what to use when. I know this is a simple concept, but i have always relied on looking (okay, a right-dlanted deacrease is made how?….). Due to the irregular shaping in this pattern, it finally set. Can’t explain why it hadn’t before or why it did now other than i finally stopped looking it up and just did it myself.

i bought some yarn the other week from Black Sheep Wool, my favorite LYS. The yarn is 55%Hemp, 45% wool and spun by a local company (person?), The Angora Cottage. I chose the color, pansies, with the short row hat in mind.

As i started knitting, however, i realized that the variations in color came too quickly to look right in the short row hat and, after reading Melissa’s ode to linen stitch, decided that the linen stitch just might be the one to show off this yarn.

so, here we have it, the pansies hat:


pattern, none really.
1. Cast on an even number of stitches, enough to fit around your head. Join in round, be careful not to twist, bla bla.
2. Work in linen stitch for 5 inches (i think i should have gone for less, though).
3. Purl one round.
4. Divide your total number of stitches by 5, call that number ‘n’
5. k2tog at the nth stitch (n=n-1) every other row until you have decreased the number of stitches by approximately 30%
6. Decrease at the nth (n=n-1) stitch every row until you have 5 stitches left.
7. Draw end of yarn through the last five stitches and work in ends.