Yarn Blog | Adventures with Yarn

After what seems like for ever Stitches West 2009 finally arrived in Santa Clara California.

It was a candy store of delight for fiber lovers. Managed to chat to many vendors and was very surprised to find many of my friends in the large crowds.

My plan was to purchase knitting patterns to match some yarn I have at home. With so much yarn in my stash I need to get busy using that before I can justify buying more. It would also be nice to get the stash down so I can sit on the window seat in the study again. I have yarn piled high both on the windows seats and also in the storage area beneath the sitting area.

It seems that no one can find the vendor page on the knitting universe website.

I have always found it to be a poorly designed site with not a lot of logic to it

Here is the link for the vendors which I found after quite a lot of browsing

http://www.knittinguniverse.com/flash/events/html/west/marketfloor.php

hope this helps everyone

Sally

Earlier this week I received a package from my parents in Adelaide. It included my favourite English Women’s Weekly magazine, always a delight to read, especially when there is a nice knitting pattern between its pages.

This time the package contained a treasure. Mum had found an old knitting book called Mousse. The book is by a yarn company called Cleckheaton and the yarn that all the patterns are designed for is called Mousse. Almost every pattern is a “must knit!”

I searched online for the yarn but could only find a couple of mentions of the actual book for sale on the internet. I emailed two yarn stores in Australia for information about the yarn but no one emailed me back with an answer. I finally emailed Cleckheaton on Friday, but by then it was the weekend in Australia. I wanted to find out the yardage and gauge that the yarn had been designed for. And of course whether Cleckheaton had a new product that had replaced the old Mousse.

Finally I turned to Ravelry the knitting and crochet website. I had been invited to join a group in South Australia earlier in the week so I posted a request for discontinued yarn on that page.
When I checked Ravelry the following morning, Eureka! someone had found three balls of the yarn in their stash. The yarn has about 94 metres on each ball and knits on a 3.75mm needle with a guage of 23.5stitches to 4 inches.

So now I can go shopping in my stash and see what treasures of yarn I own that can be used to make some of these simply gorgeous ageless designs.

If you have used Mousse, let me know what you made. If you have the book but not the yarn, I’ll post here when I find another yarn that can be used instead.

Oh what a lovely morning we had on Thursday. We met at Toni’s house and I finally got to see the “yarn room” that takes up the entire space upstairs. What a gorgeous room and I realised immediately how perfect it would be to have a yarn store right there!!

We had our usual morning tea and coffee while we all chatted about the books we had read that week. It is amazing how many books and authors we all have a common interest in.

Last week we had discussed the possibility of doing a basket as a donation for a silent auction later in the year for a charity here in Folsom. It was decided that Toni would donate some knitting classes and a collection of yarn and needles for one “prize”. They had also talked about making a blanket/throw to also be donated or entered into the auction. Yesterday I took about twenty balls of wool ease that I had in my stash, and an afghan sampler knitting book. My suggestion was that instead of knitting just plain squares or even washcloths that we use this book as the blocks are about 12 inches and we would need to knit 20 to make a reasonable sized afghan. Everyone agreed on that idea. So in the next week or two we shall make some swatches so that Toni and I can check everyone’s guage and then we can all choose which pattern each person wants to knit for the afghan.

Next week we meet at Sharon’s house but Toni will be at Stitches, lucky girl, and Jane is meeting friends in Southern California.

What a great way to spend a few hours a week knitting with a group of wonderful ladies all we a common interest.

Sally

Isn’t that the title of an old song?

I did finish the right front of the cardigan on Monday evening. I made a decision to leave all the shoulder stitches on stitch holders and will do a three needle bind off instead of casting off and sewing the shoulders together.

Spent a lot of time on Ravelry today which was very pleasant. I came across far more knitting groups in Australia, particularly Sydney and Canberra than I had imagined. I also spent time looking at all the free patterns for lace shawls and marked several as favourites. Of course I have enough yarn to make them all , however do I have the time. I would really like to find a lace guild around the Canberra area. I love knitting lace with the group that meet in Rocklin the second Saturday of each month. Lew particularly inspires me each time he shares his patterns and knitting with us.

We have had about one and a half inches of rain in the Sacramento region today. Absolutely no one is complaining and with luck we shall get a lot more before the end of March/April or the water restrictions will be even more severe as we go into Summer.

Bedtime for this tired Aussie

Sally

I am knitting the right front of this gorgeous little cardigan as I mentioned before and have just reached the armhole shaping.

What has surprised me is the instructions for the right front. It tells you in detail to do the rib and then change to larger needles and proceed as follows setting up the front with the correct stitiches either side of the lace panel. Then it goes on to say work from and to as given for the left front. What it doesn’t say is “reverse the shaping”. Obviously to anyone experienced this is not going to be a problem, is it? However to the countless newer knitters I helped at the yarn store there is a problem with that simple sentence.

What I found with newer knitters going from scarves and hats to their first sweater the pattern had to be full of detail and most importantly correct. The number of knitters that would just give up when they encountered a mistake, or poor instructions was so disappointing.

The other thing I have just noticed with the pattern is a typing error. On row 7 of the lace panel it says sip K2tog instead of slp K2tog. And then in the abbreviations it does not mention that slp means slip one nor does it say psso is pass slip stitch over or ssk is slip slip knit. Actually the more I read of the lace pattern and look at the abbreviations I realise that yf, yrn are also not explained either.

I still think this is an easy pattern for a new knitter wanting to go onto a garment and incorporate lace. However I would recommend that Plymouth include explanations for all the abbreviations they use in their patterns.

Sometimes, knitting is easy. Sometimes it can be extremely difficult. It was one of “those” days, but not because it was a complex pattern, not because of an error in the pattern. No, this time, it was a massive weight on my arm.

The sweater I have on is a design by Jamieson called Kilt Turtleneck. It is book #1 Jamieson Shetland Knitting. I used some discontinued Rowan Magpie to knit the small size and really love the way the yarn shows off the pattern.

I am knitting a small vest. The pattern is in the latest issue of Cast On. I already had the Red Heart sock yarn they used and in fact had the same colour. So the socks I planned to knit with the yarn will have to wait until I complete the vest.

Lester helping me knit

I knitted the rib on the Plymouth jacket right front this morning and that is all the knitting I have managed to get done today.

My old school friend called me from the UK this morning and we chatted for a while about the weather, economy and just the ususal things. She said it had been so cold that today she had the socks I had knit her on, plus a scarf had been well used this week.

I have chatted vie facebook with four friends whom I have not emailed or spoken to for quite a while. It is quite addictive as I find myself checking that and my emails each time I get on line now. Oh lets not forget ravelry as well.

Hot chocolate time comes around so fast
More rain forecast for overnight

Sally from a wet Folsom

Yes… I got the second sleeve completed this evening. And I cast on and knit just one row of rib on the right front. I will do the rib over the next day or two. I want to knit the lace leaf pattern at the Lace Guild meeting on Saturday as it is a very easy pattern to knit and talk at the same time. I haven’t seen Lew since January’s meeting so can’t wait to catch up on all of his news.

I had coffee with my friend Susan today to give her her birthday present two weeks late. She had been busy and we just could not connect until today. One of her twin sons is getting married in September so I as keen to hear all of the wedding plans.

This is evening was the Folsom Quilt Guild monthly meeting and Sally Collins was the guest speaker. It was a great meeting and she really is an interesting quilter. I have signed up with Collen and Janeen for the Kids For Quilts day in March. I did it about five years ago with those two and we had such a great three hours of sewing blocks for the kids. I think Alan may video a short segment for us this year.

Gosh the days seem to fly by. All of a sudden it is nearly midnight again.

Sally From a wet, thank goodness, Folsom

Well I began the second sleeve on the plymouth cardigan this morning. I wanted something to knit just in stocking stitich today.

The bushfires in Victoria Australia have been on my mind all day. We have friends in a town called Yea which is currently surrounded by 400 firefighters. And now another town called Beechworth is also threatened with being evacuated. The parents of one of my girlfriends live in that town so I have been reading the Australian Newspapers on and off all day looking to see the fires progress.

It was the last day of the Folsom Quilt Show and it was very successful. Rain had been promised and there were certainly some dark clouds around lunch time. But then the clouds moved out of our area and the daylight hours remained dry.

This evening I completed the increasing for the sleeve and I will probably have that completed by Tuesday. I want to begin the right lace front so that I can knit at the Lace Guild meeting on Saturday February 14th which is held at Filati Yarn store in Rocklin.

Have a great week
Sally