Knitting Up Rhinebeck 2008: Creatively Dyed Gloves

While I made many many happy discoveries of talented and awesome fiber artists at Rhinebeck 2008, perhaps my most happy discovery was Creatively Dyed Yarn. The lady COOKS. Her yarns are crazy gorgeous. Wild wild color combos, itty bitty bits of color next to big stretches of contrasting color, everything pops, everything sings and dances and cries out to become something beautiful that you can stare at and be constantly inspired by.

Well besides just sticking a couple of her skeins in my Inspiration Basket -- I might have to explain this another time -- I got busy winding the 2 hanks of deeply magenta-purple-violet merino sock yarn I had to had to had to have. Lace scarf and gloves, no question about it, and maybe a hat as well. I delved into Ravelry's free lace scarf patterns and found one I thought would show off the yarn best.

I worked with handpaint yarns enough by then to appreciate a few tricks. One is that while some colorways blend beautifully into plain stockinette, others need a little help. Slip stitches make a great fabric, mixing up colors from row to row. Chevron & other zig-zag stripes are a popular solution -- lots of Koigu patterns do this -- to blend multiple colorways used together.

Lace...that's a trickier one! Hadn't done much with lace before, but in studying pictures of variegated lace I saw that a very open pattern suits both fine yarn in subtle variations and chunky yarn in bolder color changes. Well, I wanted to see some flat areas of the purple CD stuff to appreciate the colors all right up against each other, with a bit of shaping to really mix them up as well. So I picked a design with more flat than open areas, that got the yarn moving in ripples. Also, it would be warmer as a scarf.

I cast on that scarf two years ago...it became my steady Take-Along knit project for nearly a year...and I've nearly finished one skein. One!! DAMN sock yarn takes bloody forever to knit into a decent length! It didn't help that I lost track of the 2nd skein for a little while...urgh. So I let the project hibernate until I found it again YAY! and felt confident to resume. But my first action upon finding the 2nd skein was to grab the DPNs and make fingerless mitts.

After all, here I was after 3 Rhinebecks the proud owner of um, yeah, LOTS of CD yarn, and I had yet to make and FINISH anything in it! Honestly I do wonder about my brain sometimes. Is it self-torture? Strength through denial? Mostly I think it's indecision. With somewhat costly yarns of strong character, you have to be cautious approaching the moment of cast-on. Horrible mistakes of judgement are harder to put behind one.

The mitts took 2 days of really easy knitting. I've been wearing them for the past 2 months. I love them. They are warm and really pretty (and make wintertime photography much pleasanter). Couldn't be simpler either: Ann Budd's all-purpose pattern for gloves, minus the thumb tip and fingers, ribbed at the top. Should've made them a bit snugger, but that's a pretty mild complaint.

Knitting Up Rhinebeck 2008: Marshmallow

The first yarn I seized at Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool 2008 was bright orange Creme Brulee by Decadent Fibers. The colors were an irresistible reminder of the beautiful autumn day. The 2nd yarn, at the same booth, was Marshmallow in shades of blue and violet.

I love love love variegated yarns. I love handpaints of most any color combination, subtle or strong. Here I fell for beautiful tones that reminded me of a Monet lily pond. Also the yarn itself, a blend of merino and alpaca, was soft but also seemed durable.

This yarn cried out to be a soft cuddly hat…so within a couple of weeks of Rhinebeck I took a deep breath and knitted my first ever beret, using the One Day Beret pattern I found on Ravelry. The pattern is really easy and fast to work, but I had to frog the 1st attempt at the rib band…I forgot Alpaca yarns aren’t stretchy!!! I reknit the band with fewer stitches until it fit.

I'm pretty hard on all my knitted projects. Having access to a washing machine with a "woolens" setting, I take full advantage of it and throw in things that in retrospect I should NEVER have had the nerve to abuse that way...but I've never had a problem with felting or wear and tear, so I shall continue this reckless course. The Marshmallow Beret has been thusly washed many times already as it is seeing me through its third winter. The colors are just a bit faded, more heathered...the ribbing is a tiny bit stretched out so the hat is looser than it once was. But I seriously still love it. A little too thin for the coldest days, but perfect for most of the winter.

There's still a bit of yarn left over from the skein. I'd make gloves but it's not quite stretchy enough, and there's not enough for a full scarf. Might be good for stranded knitting or some Kaffe Fasset sort of project, so I'm hanging onto it for now.

Knitting Up Rhinebeck 2008: Black Alpaca

I love a bargain. All knitters love a bargain. As much as I love fabulous decadent yarns like the silk & bead Tilli Thomas that costs about $4 a yard, what I really want is to be able to knit an entire sweater for about $4. I could if I used bargain-bin acrylics -- I used to LOVE the bags of Mystery Yarn Woolworths sold for $3 a pound -- but eh, while I don't think of myself as a Yarn Snob I also have learned over the years what wears well and what doesn't. Cheap acrylic yarns are scratchy, and they pill like crazy. Acrylic/wool blends are better, and have more variety in feel and color. Pure wool...ahh. That's what Rhinebeck is all about.

I did not approach my first Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool Festival thinking I would find bargains. I wanted the amazing artisianal stuff that would inspire me as I fingered and smooshed it and sighed over it. I happily paid the dyers and spinners what they asked and deserved, and I loved what I got. But here and there...here and there a Bargain beckoned. Helpless to resist my inner Yarn Magpie, I gave in. I bought 4 skeins of lush black "A Touch of Twist" Peruvian Alpaca in 2-ply fingering weight. $44 for more than 1300 yards of it.

My previous experiences with alpaca yarns were mixed. I really enjoyed knitting with Lion Brand Al-Pa-Ka, which was a pleasant and hard-wearing blend of alpaca, wool and acrylic. On the other hand, I once knit a sample garment for a wannabe sweater designer that made my life hell for 2 weeks. The yarn was thin, limp black alpaca...the sweater was utterly Boring. Just a plain black stockinette pullover in limp thin black yarn. The yarn had no stretch, no bounce. It shed a bit. The designer loved the result. I never wanted to knit with alpaca again.

But there I was at Rhinebeck 2008, and I bought black alpaca thinking I'd make a lace cardigan. And here I am in 2011, two weeks after discovering my favorite plain black cashmere cardigan was shredding and unwearable in public. As I live in New York City, I risk deportation without a plain black cardigan. (My old plain black cotton cardigan is shabby but still serviceable, but really limited to hanging out at the office when the heating is inadequate. And the cushy black boucle cardi I made several years ago is a bit too warm for everyday use.)

Yesterday I finally cast on the lace cardigan of my imagination. The thin yarn is plump and springy, a delight to knit! I'll discuss the logistics more in another post...but it's a top-down raglan, and I'm adding a simple lace design to the sleeves and fronts. I'm about to place the markers for the sleeve increases. Whee!

Itty Bitty Orchids: Dendrobium auriculatum

Orchid serendipity! At the H&R booth at the 2010 SEPOS show at Longwood Gardens, I came upon a number of awesome species I wasn't quite familiar with...but brought home because H&R Orchids can always be trusted to offer things well worth having.

Among other things, I picked up 2 wee plants of Dendrobium auriculatum. The thin canes are dressed in thin pointy leaves, and the plants closely resemble mini Oerstedellas. I had a good feeling about them, figuring they'd be perfect for my warm conditions. The plants had thick roots (also like Oerstedellas) clinging to little chunks of wood; I merely put the wood into slightly larger plastic pots, with well-draining bark mix, leaving the (extremely compact) rhizome and growing points well above the surface. I placed it on the lower (cooler) shelf of my light garden, with the cane tops several inches below the center portion of the fluorescent tubes.

Only a couple of weeks later, a friend brought a large, lovingly tended speciment to the GNYOS show table, and I was thrilled at the potential of my little guys! He grows indoors on a windowsill and thought this species a real winner for its ease of growth and lovely, large, fragrant flowers.

The larger of my plants, only about 5 inches tall, flowered with one huge wonderful bloom (shown above) in June, 2 months after my friend's plant. The sweet citrusy fragrance was wonderful, filling the room at precisely 1 hour before sundown every evening.

I gave one away. The remaining plant has done well, only showing a bit of stress during our 100+ degree summer heat. Fall and winter, growth resumed on young canes, and I do hope this spring brings new flowers.

Knitting up Rhinebeck 2008: Creme Brulee

This is the yarn that I grabbed first at my first Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool Festival. It was a gorgeous crisp sparkling blue-sky autumn day, and the plentiful maple trees were in fantastic color all around the fair grounds. I wandered into this building with straw on the floor, flooded with sunlight, stuffed with amazing yarn. I found myself in the booth run by Decadent Fibers, and I wanted ALL OF IT.

I settled for 2 skeins from them. The absolute first choice was this hank of Creme Brulee, because the color was going to be my souvenir of the day. The yarn is absolutely a perfect reflection of autumn leaves, so I had to make something "leafy" out of it.

Merino, silk and mohair blend in a soft, chunky gently twisted strand...it cried out to be a beret, even though I had some fear of itchiness. I invented a circular leaf-lace pattern suitable for a hat, then added the mitts and scarf using a standard Barbara Walker leafy lace.

Lemme tell ya, inventing a lace beret pattern is HARD. I frogged the darn thing at least 6 times because I kept making it too big. It's really hard to measure something scrunched up on a tiny circular needle! Especially as it was only the 2nd beret I'd ever made. I finished the beret in 2009, but only wore it when winter was nearly over! The mitts and scarf waited even longer. I only finished the scarf in early December 2010.

The other thing that was hard was letting this yarn take me out of my personal color comfort zone. I've never been a huge fan of orange, and never thought it looked good against my skin. But there are enough complicated color changes in this yarn to allow me to ignore that small issue.

Rhinebeck 2010 Stash

I was pretty restrained at the 2010 Sheep & Wool Festival. Mindful of having 2 years of gorgeous yarn still just sitting around at home unusued, mindful of having to still get rid of a lot of less special yarn, mindful of having less time than ever to knit, I did a lot more looking than buying. In fact, I finally saw the entire Festival! I finally made it into 2 buildings I never did before, and I enjoyed more browsing, and I enjoyed the walking and the beautiful day so much more than when I was anxious for MORE MORE MORE YARN.

I'm quite happy with what I got, and had projects in mind for all of it as I bought it. There are 9 projects here -- 7 entire, and 2 more that are new additions to previous year's purchases cos I love the yarn so much, I wanted to make sure I had enough!

So now that I've posted all my 3 Rhinebeck stashes, I'll next start posting the projects...

Belated Rhinebeck 2009...

Still not sure exactly what happened, but I suppose into every blog a temporal gap must fall. Or appear. Perhaps I had a sense that my life was entirely too leisurely, and chose to focus on other things instead. Harrumph. Well, now that life is no longer leisurely, now that I've returned to a 9-5 job for several months, now I can force myself to find time to blog again. Of course.

To catch up on one thing at a time, my 2009 Rhinebeck trip yielded yet another treasure trove of fantastic yarn goodies. See above. I figure, if you're going to a place like Rhinebeck Sheep & Wool Festival, one might as well support true fiber artisans making really nommy handmade or handpainted stuff. ("Support" of course means in this context "hand over large sums of cash".)

From the above picture, I have actually begun a whopping uh, two projects. Two! And neither is finished. I might have to partly frog one, only 1/4 done.

But the good news is that from Rhinebeck 2008 I actually finished knitting 1 entire skein of yarn! The bad news is...Rhinebeck 2010. Next post....