Category: Knitting

We got some long awaited rain today and more is forecast for the whole weekend. My sister Jane lives in the Top part of Western Australia which is going through its wet season at the moment. I received a note from her this afternoon telling me the rain had finally stopped this week, thats for the moment. She had put photos on facebook and my goodness the roads were badly flooded. Anyway I chatted back and said I was glad her rain had stopped because now we are getting our share.

I worked on my blue aran sweater this evening and completed the front up to the neck shaping before dinner. Since then I have done the shaping for one half of the neck front and expect to complete the second half of the neck shaping over the weekend. Then of course I have two long sleeves to knit. It is a very heavily cabled sweater in quite a heavy cotton so it will certainly be a winter and fall sweater not a spring summer one here in Folsom.

It has been a few days since I did any knitting on the Plymouth jacket but I only have the right front and the second sleeve to knit. That won’t take too long and then of course I will probably procrastinate about the finishing..

Well it is very late so I am going to make hot chocolate and then go to bed. We have two skylights right above our bed so it is lovely to listen to the rain at night.

Off to the Folsom Quilt and Fiber Show tomorrow and again on Sunday at the information desk for three hours so that will be fun.

Bye for now
Sally

What a relaxing way to spend a few hours with good friends food and coffee/tea…

We did discuss guage a little but then moved on to socks and hats on three four or circular needles. They were a little surprised that I could knit the aran cable sweater and talk at the same time!!!!

Had a call from Pat Clark and we will organise a field trip to do a class, that to be decided, down to Sonora for a day. She was pleased to hear from me and excited to know I wanted to bring a group of ladies down there for the class, shopping and lunch.

This evening Alan and I went to the Folsom Quilt and Fibre Art Show preview party. The shows runs from Friday through Sunday evening. There are some gorgeous quilts, garments and other projects on display. Not knitting but certainly another passion of mine.

Goodnight

Well what a day. Apart from knitting for about an hour this morning on my blue aran cotton sweater I have been busy with other things all day.

I had to do some ironing and was pleased to get that all done this morning. Then of course it was time to do a little bit of housework.

But the main thing I have done is list all my books, knitting patterns and knitting magazines on Raverly. What a job. I knew I had a lot of books but once you start looking through the book cases I realised just how many I have collected. I have some that are not listed in the Raverly library so NOT all of mine are on the website. Same goes for a lot of the Rowan magazines etc.etc.

I might tackle the needle stash, however I will not put my yarn stash on there because there is far too much.

I am looking forward to the knitting group tomorrow. Toni has asked me to explain guage/tension. I am taking two Sally Melville books with me as I think her explanation is quite good. Be interesting to see what happens.

Bye for now

Sally in Folsom

Someone asked me quite recently who had the biggest influence on my knitting career. I did not have to think for too long to tell them that the main influence was Matthew Wright.

I met Matthew in June 1996 when I had just arrived in San Francisco from Jerrabomberra Australia. My husband had been transferred here for a short time to work for a company located in the Financial district of San Francisco. I came with Alan for four months and we lived on Powell Street almost on California Street.

Within days of arriving I found the Yarn Garden on Sutter Street and Matthew was the owner. It was like a little piece of heaven for me. I could walk to the store and yes I could knit with him whenever I wanted to. Matthew had just opened the wonderful store over looking Sutter Street with a whole wall of windows. He had a gorgeous table with chairs just waiting for knitters to come and sit for a while.

Matthew introduced me to the designer Alice Starmore’s books and yarn and quite quickly I made two sweaters from Fishermens Sweaters, one of course is my favourite Cape Cod. And I am still in love with that sweater 12 years later. And of course there were other companies that I grew to love because of the yarn he carried in the store.

I went back to Australia for a short time and eventually moved back in January 1997. This time we were relocated to Foster City, but I could still get to the city of San Francisco very easily on a bus. And usually did twice a week.

This time I brought several sweaters to the store that I had knit but had never finished. With Matthews guidance and fabulous tips I managed to get all of them put together and they are still gorgeous. My biggest regret is that I did not take notes when we were going through the process, nor photos which would have been so helpful now.

We moved away from the Bay area in 1998 and sadly saw little of Matthew after that. Unfortunately the store closed due to the economic climate when the IT bubble burst and that was heartbreaking. If only he could have kept it going until the huge knitting revival about 2003/4 the store would have become a mecca again for knitters from all over the world.

When I worked at the Filati Yarn Store I paid for my finishing to be done as I really enjoy the knitting process most of all. Now that I have some time on my hands I am busy knitting and have four sweaters all waiting to be finished. This weekend I am going to sew together the sweater I have made for Orlando my hairdresser so that he can get some use out of it travelling back and forth to New York.

I would love to sit and knit with Matthew again as I have so many things to share with him. I have progressed so far because of the time I spent with Matthew in that little piece of heaven on Sutter Street called The Yarn Garden.

All of a sudden it is time for bed and I realised I had not put anything on this page today.

I did about 6 rows of knitting on the Aran sweater this morning but then had to do housework and work. So….

I wrote my first book review today for a book called Knit1 For the Road. If you look on our newspaper www.NewsBlaze.com and go to books on the left hand side of the front page click on that and my review is on there. For the Folsom Toni group I wil bring a copy of the book on Thursday for you to have a look at and see what you think of it.

The other thing I wanted to finally write up was a story Alan and I had written about 18 months ago about California Cashmere. Again the full story is on www.NewsBlaze.com this time under top stories so if you are interested you can read it there. I had been looking for luxury yarn which is my prefered yarn to knit with when I found the site www.CalCashmere.com

You can actually arrange for a tour and lecture about the business. Seeing the goats and obviously touching and feeling the cashmere in skeins, on cones or as roving was a nice experience. It was a fabulous day trip to Calaveras County and one we have discussed doing again when the “kids” are available to admire and I need more cashmere. The day we visited I purchased a cone of cashmere and that is about 3200 yards more than enough to do the shawl I want to knit out of the book Folk Shawls.

If you can not make a trip to the farm they will be at Stitches West at the end of February for four days. If you look at the article on NewsBlaze there is a great link to Forbes magazine to an article they did on the farm.

This evening, after sitting at the computer for such a long time today, I did get a break and knit about 10 rows on the aran sweater. So that was very relaxing just before bed.

Two books came via UPS this evening so I am looking forward to having a look through them tomorrow.

Have a good time knitting where ever you may be
Sally in Folsom CA

My Sunday knitting group was down to just three of us today. It was Super Bowl so a few were home with their families watching either the game or the advertisements. We had our usual ‘senior’ lunch and then went to the book store to have coffee, browse magazines, chat and of course knit.

I bought the new winter Vogue Knitting magazine which I thought was long overdue. While there were some very odd designs scattered throughout, on the whole, I felt that there was enough good content and patterns to purchase the magazine.

The Wendy cotton sweater came with me to so that I could get some more of the front piece knitted. Everyone liked the pattern and all commented on how much softer the cotton felt knitted up than in the little ball that is packaged in at the moment.

Dianne arrived quite late after a busy day yesterday and a late breakfast this morning she decided coffee and a later lunch was the order of the day.

This evening I have been knitting the Pymouth cardigan and am making very good progress with the left front piece. I do hope that by the middle of the week I will have that front done and can then begin the right front at the knitting group on Thursday.

Happy Knitting
Sally in Folsom

I love Saturdays as they are so relaxing.

Of course there was time for knitting this morning. I made some progress on another UFO which had been in progress for about twelve months. This is a cotton sweater for me and I am using Elsebeth Lavold’s cable cotton in a pretty blue. I believe the shade is 04 and it has been discontinued. The pattern I am using is a very old Wendy Aran #4205 and it has a long and short version. The sweater is very heavily cabled and on size US7 needles.

I had completed the back ages ago, but just could not be bothered to knit it any more. Anyway I started on the front last night and so far it is looking as nice as the back piece. The only change I think I am going to make is to do short rows on the shoulders and then if that works out I will do a three needle bind off which makes a nice seam.

The other little chore we had to do today besides do some work. Was to spend time in the back yard pruning some of the roses. We have about fifty rose bushes spread throught both the back and front yards so it does take a little time to prune them all. We will try and complete all of them by next weekend and then wait for the spring time and all the new leaves and roses. In April 2007 our gardens were in the Folsom Garden Show so I do feel as though I have an honour to preserve each year.

Well we have had dinner so it is time to sit and knit for a little. By the way the afghan is being well loved already…

Thank goodness for that. I have just sewn in all the loose ends and presented the completed afghan to Alan.

The afghan pattern I used was out of a Leisure Arts book called Big Book of Quick Knit Afghans, and it was design number 4 called Peaceful. I used Plymouth Encore Colorspun #7118 and used 13 balls except a little left over for repairs. The yarn is knitted double and I used #17 needles. Actually I did start the project with Addi Turbo #17, but even I found them too slippery especially when my hands were cold. After two pattern repeats I changed to Crystal Palace bamboo 26 inch #17 and on this project they worked very well.

This morning Lester one of our Maine Coon cats tried to sit on the afghans while I was knitting it at the dining room table!! So when I gave it to Alan he has instructions to fold it over the back of his chair when not being used. And yes we shall store it in a plastic sweater bag when the weather gets warm again.

I am still laughing about the Quick Knit title, because it really did take me about 2 years to get this UFO finally finished.

I was lucky enough to get invited to a shopping excursion at Lofty Lou’s in Placerville with a knitting group from Folsom. The ladies meet on Thursday morning at various places and have done for several months. They met at a beginner class held at the Senior Centre in Folsom and became good friends.

We spent a good hour in Lofty Lou’s and it was very pleasant. I had been there before about three years ago on a shop hop and had a very nice shopping experience. While I did not purchase yarn I did buy three single knitting patterns and a knitting book and found the staff so helpful.

It was then off to lunch at Sweetie Pie where we given a whole room to ourselves. This was a wonderful time to sit and share knitting information and general chit chat. I got to meet the three ladies that had travelled up in another car and felt so comfortable with everyone.

On the way back to Folsom we called into Sierra Knitting  Co which is in Cameron Park. Debi Padlicki is the owner and we were greeted very warmly. I purchased a Lantern Moon bag that was actually on sale for 50% off, I love a bargain and Toni purchased a skein of yarn to make a beret.

Since getting home I have looked at my new patterns and the book, finding even more than I liked originally. It will be a tough choice now deciding on a new  project when other UFO’s have been completed.

Oh and I have done another ball of yarn on the dreaded afghan so there are four balls left to knit now…

I did get up early this morning and do 10 rows of the afghan and I feel rather good about that little bit of progress.

The cardigan that I have been working on is Plymouth pattern NO47 and is called the Baby Alpaca DK Leaf Panel Cardigan. I think it would be a nice project for someone learning how to do lace work as the lace is only on the two front pieces. 

 As I said in an earlier post I was cautious about recommending the pattern until I had at least done the back, one sleeve and started one front. The last two Plymouth patterns I have used both had mistakes in and unless you are an experienced knitter you probably would have given up on them.  So far I have not encountered any problems at all so will keep you uptodate on my progress with the fronts.

The yarn I am using is not alapaca. In fact I decided to use a Louisa Harding yarn called Kashmir DK which is a mix of merino woolm microfibre and cashmere. While the yarn is pretty and it is recommended to be knit at 22 stitches to 4 inches, at that guage is sloppy and does not keep any structure in the pieces. Also when knitting with it the yarn catches very badly and I am finding little threads all over the garment. Wooden needles made that even worse so I am back to addi turbo metal needles again.

I spoke to a good friend Susan who had started using the yarn for a pattern by Patrica Roberts and she was so disappointed with the yarn that she passed it on to a donation bag.  I have the pretty apricot colour #8 on the needles for this project, but sadly I have another 20 balls in white that I am now reluctant to use. Maybe a donation or perhaps a baby blanket or two for some needy families!!!!