I made this shawl last fall for the new Tension Magazine and it’s finally been released. This narrow shawl was worked in Filatura di Crosa Superior, a very fuzzy cashmere silk that was lovely to crochet. It’s a filet-crochet style pattern that shifts organically from triangles (hence the isoceles) to diamonds (double triangles) and back to triangles at the end. It’s been a season of shawls. I have had three in the works for most of the winter, and now they’re all finally done and will be released in one form or another over the coming months.

Before I sent off my shawl, I got my friend Erica to model it for me. Here’s another one:

You can find all of this chilly photoshoot in the slideshow below. Luckily the Orca Books, where we finished up, has hot coffee!

Yesterday we got a huge dump of wet, wet snow, the city almost shut down which is saying a lot for Cordova. The snow removal machines (And James who seems to be constantly shoveling our BIG driveway) have had a very hard time keeping up. Snow keeps falling off the roof (roofalanche!) and piling up in front of our windows,  so we get a lot less light in the house during our short days, but the view outside is very pretty now that its gotten a little colder and the snow has slowed. I’m just hoping everything is cleaned up by the time we fly out on Sunday.

Meanwhile, even in the thick of the snowstorm people were out in droves walking through the foot-deep slush in town shopping and generally having a good time. The Net Loft was busy yesterday and several friends stopped by and we did some exchanging of gifts. I gave my friend Angela a little Noro scarflette like the one I made myself back in May.

Angela gave ME this adorable little handmade doll by an Alaskan artisan. The doll is a weaver and has a little in progress basket in her hands. She’s also wearing a Kuspuk which is a traditional native Alaskan garment.

I haven’t mailed this little scarf yet, and the recipient may or may not be reading this blog post, (I hope she likes it when she gets it!) but Colleen was kind enough to model it for me. The scarf is made using the snowflake garland pattern from Red Heart, I made it with Brown Sheep Bulky and a USM hook, and added the tassels at the end.

Finally, I re-discovered this custom colorway of Three Irish Girls Gallenas at The Net Loft on Wednesday, and had to get it to make some small ornaments for gifts. This is the heart from simplebeans.

I hope you’re all finding a little time to crochet during these busy weeks. I’ve been saving this skein of handspun from Blonde Chicken Boutique since I bought it last spring. I’m thinking of making my Elsinore Woods Scarf [Ravelry Link] with it this evening if I get the chance. The scarf pattern is in the latest issue of Inside Crochet (issue #5).

There’s been a mini spinning boom here in Cordova. Earlier in the summer a couple of people in town expressed an interest in learning to spin, and Dotty had a class. I dusted off my wheel which had been hibernating most of the year and started spinning a little too. Selma wanted to learn, and when The Net Loft put a couple of their old floor model wheels on super-dooper-I-could hardly-believe it-sale, I bought her one as a finishing 3rd grade with honors gift. Dotty has been giving Selma spinning lessons over the summer and she’s now doing great. I’ve been spinning at least a couple of nights a week, and I actually find that spinning long draw is good exercise for my shoulders undoing the tightness that sometimes builds up from knitting, crocheting and computer use. (Spinning as therapy, yeah!). So, when I admitted to Dotty that I don’t really use my handspun, I just spin for fun, and to look at the pretty yarn, she couldn’t believe it. My friends all admonished me too. Peer pressure can be a great thing.

So, last week, I made this:

Well, two skeins of it, actually, about 220 yards, 9 wpi. The yarn is made from roving I bought at the 2008 Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. It’s from Handspun by Stefania, and it’s all plant dyed. One ply is indigo dyed corriedale with silk noils, and the other is a coopworth silk/wool blend dyed with Osage-orange wood. The coopworth was a grey wool, and it, blended with the silk has given the osage-dyed yarn an amazing golden quality. The plied yarn reminds me of old maps with blue oceans and baroque golden continents. My friend Erika says it reminds her of bull kelp floating in the inlets where she likes to kayak.

I didn’t spin the yarn with a project in mind (because I never do), but once I had finished it, I knew it had to be a hat. A slouchy hat that I could wear without smooshing my hair, kind of in the style of my Elissa hat, but warmer and more substantial. Good for rainy days–like yesterday when I had to take this picture.

Then the wind really started blowing.

No, it’s not blurry, those are raindrops on the lens. Today, it’s sunny and bright, and I had worse luck trying to re-shoot because the shadows were so harsh, but I got this o.k. shot of the back (cropped heavily to get rid of the rotting salmon I didn’t notice was on the beach in front of me–that’s fall in Alaska!)

Yesterday I was teaching at The Net Loft when I had one of those strange convergences whereby the need for something springy to wear (brought on by a bit of rainy weather) and the urge to crochet a quick project ended hitting me right as I walked past the cubby of Noro Silk Garden. (I swear, I didn’t plan this, I even had to buy a hook as I had only brought one with me for a lace project).

I didn’t mean to scowl, but it was cold and wet, and I’m not so good at the hasty self-portrait. This was before I blocked the scarf. It’s crocheted with a point at one end beginning with just one v-stitch and increasing in each row until I had 8 v-stitches. I then worked even putting in a keyhole (basically a buttonhole made by chaining and skipping stitches) after a few rows. Then I continued to work even in v-stitches until the scarf was about 36″ long. I finished the crocheting in about 2 hours, it was a nice change from the hard to see lace-mohair that I’ve been working on.

After about 3 inches of work on the little scarfette, my friend Becca had to put down the socks she was knitting and go get her own ball of Silk Garden to make a scarf too. So now there are two of these scarves in Cordova. (It takes a wee bit more than one ball to get the length and width I wanted, but you can get two scarves easily from three balls, so Becca plans to make one in the color I used yesterday and I’ll do likewise with her color).

I washed it last night in Unicorn Fibre Wash. I knew that Noro was pretty minimally processed (there were lots of twigs to be removed while I was crocheting), but I was still suprised at the amount of actual DIRT that came out while I soaked it. It’s much softer after blocking. I hard blocked it with pins, but I’m actually planning to wet it again and re-scrunch it a bit, because I like it’s rustic, scrunched up look better.

Because everyone should get a little treat on tax day, and because I wore Waltz the other day and renewed my love for it, I think you should have one too.  Therefore, for today only, Waltz is only $2.00. Enjoy!

Waltz is cozy, and lightweight, stretchy and lacy all at once. It’s flattering and fun to wear. It’s worked in fingering-weight organic O-Wool 2-ply yarn, (sock yarn would be a great substitute, and would require just 2 skeins, most likely). The pattern is sized from 32″ – 44″. I used a 3.5mm hook.

OK, let’s start with the new pattern. You might have already heard that the new Twist Collective is out. It’s a great issue with some fabulous articles and a great selection of patterns. I especially liked all the socks. I have a pattern in the collection called Pidder Pat (above). It’s a baby sweater crocheted from Lorna’s Laces Green Line DK.

I know I said in my last post that I didn’t see obvious creative connections between the books on tape I listened to and my design work. It appears dinner is a different story. I was nearly done preparing our Sunday meal before I realized that an influence must have occurred.

It’s not unusual for us to make a big pot of soup on Sunday that will get us through a few nights the following week. This week, I decided to make yellow split pea soup with potatoes since we were trying to use up an over-abundance of tubers. In Dragonfly in Amber, the protagonists have just returned from France to their farm where they harvest a large crop of potatoes and make potato soup. My soup ended up a lovely amber color due to the addition of some tomato paste to add a bit of tanginess.

We don’t have a bakery here in Cordova, so when I do make soup I always bemoan the fact that we can’t have a crusty loaf to go with it. Occassionally I’ll make bread from scratch, but since I prefer the no knead recipes, that takes a little forethought. Today I decided to try making some dough in the bread maker, then baking it in my baguette pans. We’ve had the bread machine for about 13 years, and I’ve never used it just to make dough, but it was so easy and worked perfectly.

The baguettes had just the right crustiness and texture inside, and took only about 15 minutes total of hands-on time. (Really, not enough for my taste, I like to get my hands into dough when I make bread–but it was fast and yummy!)

I can see using this feature for making regular loaves and pizza dough too.

Here are my recipes:

Amber Potage

3 T olive oil
1 large onion, diced
1 lb carrots, diced
1 lb yukon potatoes, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T thyme
1 quart organic vegetable broth
2 quarts water
1 lb yellow split peas, sorted and rinsed
2 T apple cider vinegar
1 sm can tomato paste
salt and pepper to taste

Sauté onion until translucent. Add garlic, carrots, potatoes and sauté until vegetables start to get tender. Add thyme and cook 2 minutes more. Add broth then water and peas. Cook over medium heat until vegetables are soft and peas are cooked through. Using and immersion blender, purée the soup leaving some chunks of carrot and potato intact. Stir in tomato paste and stir until it’s completely incorporated. Add apple cider vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.

Bread Machine Baguettes
Adapted from the Black & Decker All-In-One Deluxe Automatic Breadmaker Operating Instructions & Cookbook Classic French Dough recipe

1 1/4 c water
2 t sugar
1 1/2 t salt
3 1/2 c organic unbleached flour
1 1/2 t active-dry yeast
2 T cornmeal
1 t. canola oil

Place the water, sugar, salt, flour and yeast into the bread machine pan in the order listed above. Set your machine to the “dough” setting. Grease baguette pans and sprinkle wtih cornmeal.

When the dough is finished, remove it from the machine, and on a clean surface, separate the dough in half. Stretch each piece into a long flat rectangle and then roll the rectangle into a baguette shape. Place the baguettes into the pans seam side down.

Cover the dough with a towel and allow to rise again in a warm spot (approximately 30 minutes). Preheat the oven to 400F. Slit the baguettes down the middle with a sharp knife. Bake for 25 minutes or until the internal temperature of the bread reads 190F on an instant read thermometer. Remove baguettes from pans and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Last week I was thinking it would be fun to make something valentiney, and then while I was working at The Net Loft, I re-discovered the Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted semi-solid colors. This combined with the fact that I’m currently taking a knitting class in designing nordic mittens led me to try out a stranded hat with the new yarn and Valentine theme. I’m considering it a warm-up for the crocheted fair-isle bear sweater I’m about to start. I was out of practice doing crocheted colorwork, and I had to play around a bit with holding the yarn to get a comfortable technique. I ended up holding both colors in the left hand.

I began the hat at the top, and concentrated the increases instead of spiraling them throughout the crown so that I didn’t have to worry about changing colors and increasing at the same time. I also didn’t want obvious increase lines since the color patterning is what should get the attention.

I used the special tapestry crochet graph paper from Carol Ventura’s More Tapestry Crochet to initially chart the hearts. The slanted graph paper shows what the charts look like in crocheted stitches which don’t stack vertically, especially when worked in the round. I then transferred it to standard graph paper so it’s easier to follow while crocheting.

Then after working the heart chart, I worked even to create the rolled brim. (BTW, the mist on the lake behind me? They call that “frozen fog.” Selma and I think the back yard looks like Narnia under the rule of the White Witch.)

I didn’t write a conventional pattern, but I drew out the chart so if you want to make the hat too, you can.

I used a partial skein of skein of Lamb’s Pride in Creme (M-10) and almost the whole skein of Strawberry Smoothies (M-200). My gauge with a 5mm hook was about 4.3 sts per inch. The hat has about a 23″ circumference.

Starting with 6 sts, I doubled in the sts in the 2nd and 3rd rounds and again in the 5th. In rnd 9, I increased again in every other st, and in rnd 12 in every 3rd st for a total of 96 sts. I increased once more to 99 sts before beginning the hearts.

The chart represents 1/2 of the hat. So, you’ll continue each pattern row as you began to the end of the round. (The rounds are spiraled, but I’d recommend placing a marker at the beginning, so you can keep track.) The x’s mark the white stitches. Clicking on the chart will take you to its flickr page where you can download a hi-res version.

Like I said, I had to fiddle a bit before getting comfortable again changing colors. I made a little (low-quality) video so you could see what I ultimately ended up doing. It also demonstrates how to yarn over with the new color in the stitch before the color change.

Let me know if you have questions. I’d be happy to answer them. We’re taking a trip to Anchorage with the kids for Valentine’s day. It will be my first time on the ferry in Prince William Sound and I’m looking forward to it. We’ll be seeing the new movie Coraline based on the book by Neil Gaiman that Selma got for Christmas and loved, and we’ll be stocking up on chocolate hard-to-find groceries.

It’s interesting (and a relief) to finally begin to dig down into my virtual and actual to-do piles now that I’m  catching up on things after the move. In May, right before moving, I was putting the finishing touches on a few new patterns, getting them ready for the Columbus TNNA trade show, having photoshoots and finalizing pattern details. Then, the movers came, and the actual “publishing” of the patterns got delayed. (Even though I had mentioned most of them on the blog back in the spring). So, over the next few weeks, I’ll be releasing them one-by-one.

Since we’re already on the subject of soft and warm yak yarn, I thought I’d start with Yogan’s Hat.

This was my first experience knitting with 100% yak down, and it was lovely and natural feeling, and perfect for being next to sensitive baby skin. The yarn was soft and springy while I was working with it, but after I finished the hat, I gave it a quick wash and it bloomed and softened even more.  The beautiful chocolate brown is the natural color of the yak. As with the Cosmopolitan Cowl, I actually got the inspiration for this pattern while at TNNA looking at the beautiful pictures of the yaks in Eileen and Carl’s booth. The Yak who inspired the cap was named Yogan so I named the pattern after him.

This is Lars. I grabbed him at a neighborhood Easter egg hunt back in Takoma Park and convinced his mom to let him be my model.

You can buy the pattern PDF for $4.00.

If you have a yarn store and you’d like to offer the pattern to your customers in print or via PDF download, please visit The Stitch Cooperative.

If you had fun at the Homespun Yarn Party (or you didn’t make it), you should c’mon out to the Takoma Gazebo (in old town) for the Old Town Knitting and Craft Fair.

Here are the official details:

Event: Old Takoma Knitting and Craft Fair
Date: Sunday, May 18
Time: 12:00 – 4:00 pm
Location: Old Takoma Gazebo – Red Line Metro to Takoma Station, four blocks North on Carroll Avenue
(across the street from House of Musical Traditions)

Join some of your favorite local yarn dyers, including Mama E’s C*EYE*Ber Fiber, Storm Moon Knits, and Woolarina, plus designers, writers, jewelers, and crafters for an afternoon of wool-inspired bliss. Designer Amy O’Neill-Houck will be signing copies of hers latest book, The Color Book of Felted Crochet. Also enjoy the Takoma Park Farmer’s Market which will be open from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm.

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I won’t have any of my handspun (below) for sale, since I’m spinning just for the fun of it, but I may bring my wheel, to demonstrate my novice abilities!

Here’s a quick round-up of my Sheep and Wool week which started on Wednesday with a class!

This is Maggie Casey–here she’s spinning fiber right off of a comb. For years, I’ve ignored the lure of the spinning wheel, but somehow the impending move to Alaska made me change my mind. I signed up for Maggie’s two-day beginning spinning class, and I was hooked. Spinning is fun. Really fun. Also, learning to spin has taught me a lot about yarn, which I’m sure will inform my knitting and crochet work. Making yarn is cool–and I actually have no aspirations to make yarn for any knitting or crochet projects–I just like playing with the fiber. I liked it so much that I asked for this for mother’s day:

James, being an avid cyclist, I think was partially convinced to buy it because my new toy contained an actual wheel. (When I first told him I had signed up for a spinning class, he thought I mean the exercising kind!) When I told my dad about the wheel, he said, “Wow, you’ve really gone over the edge.” I have to say I agree, but I went over happily.

I chose the Lendrum wheel after trying Maggie’s. I loved how it spun and she advised me that it was easy to care for and right for the kind of yarn I’d like to make. (On the thinner side, good for crochet).

The first day of the class we learned about carding and about preparing fleeces for spinning, then we learned about “woolen” spinning. Woolen means that while you are spinning, you let the yarn twist between your front hand (which controls the twist) and the back hand which is drafting (drawing the fibers apart. Woolen spinning is bouncy, elastic and soft. Woolen yarn is made with “carded” fiber. It’s Maggie’s favorite kind to spin. It’s good for soft things but because it’s fuzzier, woolen yarn can pill and wear–maybe not a great choice for say, socks or even fancy textured work because the stitches don’t show up as well. I liked spinning woolen too because we got to learn the “long draw” method which is a dramatic way of pulling the fiber back about an arm’s length–it’s a fast way to make lots of yarn, and it’s not as hard on your body as other methods.

The next day, we tried plying yarn. I had tried plying at home with some yarn I spun just to see if I could, in preparation for the class. In the class I found out plying is great for fixing some imperfections in your “singles” (the yarn before it’s plied)–for instance, you can possibly straighten bits of over-twist, something I do a lot as a beginner.

After plying we learned about “worsted” spinning. Worsted yarn is made from combed fiber. Maggie showed us how to use combs, and then she showed us how to comb using our carders. I loved taking a small lock of fiber and coming it, then spinning it–seems like instant gratification–you don’t have to prepare a whole skein’s worth at a time, and you can sort of “design” the yarn as you go by choosing different fibers and colors. Spinning worsted, you don’t let the yarn twist at all between your hands, and you draft the yarn by pulling forward with the front hand (the opposite of what we were doing the day before. This was a little hard for me to do after having spent so much time with the woolen spinning, but I finally got the hang of it. I especially liked spinning “over the fold” where you take a combed lock of wool and fold it over your index finger, spinning it from there. Worsted yarn is much smoother than woolen and therefore is good for cables, socks, things that require durability over softness.

Today I finally washed the yarn I made, and it’s drying in the sun. I’ll get a proper photo once my camera battery has charged.

So, on Saturday at the festival, I spent the morning in the Cloverhill Yarn Booth where I was selling my patterns–what fun! Jolene, the new owner of the Cloverhill Yarn Shop put together a booth of *all* indie yarn dyers and spinners and invited me to sell my patterns. The booth had a great location and drew big crowds. After lunch, James and I bought the wheel, then we all went home–so I didn’t look at the booths at all. Luckily, we came back on Sunday.

Saturday night, we went to the Ravelry Party. I’ll let you read Emily’s round-up of the party. Also, Martha has a great photoset on Flickr. (Pay special attention to the photo of Barbara after she had set her pattern on fire–only my mom thought to dunk the pattern in a drink–the rest of the folks at the table were too busy looking for their cameras so they could take a picture for their blogs!) Emily and I showed up in time to help out handing drink tickets and raffle tickets to the party-goers. My mom was a “bouncer” keeping people out of the main area until it was time to come in. The party was such fun–it was great to meet so many ravelers in person, finally.

On Sunday morning, we were exhausted, but we went on back. The weather was milder, the crowds were thinner–it was lovely. I looked at all the booths, and had a great time buying bits of fiber. I wasn’t in the market for yarn, but couldn’t resist some Savannah (a organic cotton/wool blend from the Fibre Company that was on sale).

Here’s a slide show of all my photos.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.