Day One: Yarned

I often get asked which is the best yarn I have ever used. I never know how to answer because, for me, the quality of yarn is wholly dependent upon what project I am doing. When I think about yarn, which I admittedly do all the time, I just try to think about it in context. What type of project am I making and who am I making it for? How will the object be treated, how will it be used and how often will it be used? Do I need to think about maintenance? In other words, every yarn has a purpose. - Something About Yarn - Knitting & Crochet Blog Week 2010

I wrote this last year and it still rings true to me. Thanks to my livelihood, I see and use a lot of different yarns and I have rarely come across yarn that isn't fit for purpose. I will freely admit that out-and-out novelty yarn like Rico Pom-Pom isn't for me but it is a great yarn for the right sort of knitter. Likewise, I am a huge, huge fan of Rowan Kidsilk Haze but I know several knitters who cannot abide the texture, the fibres or how it knits up.

If I look at my personal stash, it is clear that I like really fine yarns (i.e. lace weight yarns).

I cannot explain this love of lace weights because I can only wear so many lacy shawls without looking like I'm taking part in a Victorian Era re-enactment show and yet I am forever knitting and stashing yarn not much thicker than regular sewing thread.

I am currently knitting a very, very basic triangular shawl using Noro Sekku, a 2-ply cotton/wool/silk blend. It is a typical Noro yarn with surprising colour changes, thin & thick bits, and it is slightly overspun. It works well with a very simple stocking stitch shawl but as a knitter I think I am definitely gravitating towards less showy yarns.

When next in Scandinavia I have a mind to stock up on Snældan 1ply, a brilliant Faroese/Falklands yarn, and Navia Uno, a strange lace yarn which combines a high-twist 'thread' and an underspun core to great effect. Both yarns look very unremarkable in the skein, but they knit up beautifully. My current blog header is a close-up of Navia Uno, incidentally. Later in the year I hope to have time to knit with Garthenor's organic 1-ply wool. I wish that Blacker Design did fine yarns because I would love to try some of the different breeds and also support British producers whilst I'm indulging in my favourite past-time.

Find more blogs participating in the Knitting & Crochet Blog Week by googling 2KCBWDAY1.

FOs: Cowl & Quilt

What a great spring weekend. Perfect for finishing projects and take photos of said Finished Objects in the park.

First up, my new favourite piece of knitwear. A super-simple cowl knitted in the round out of three different silky yarns. It feel luxurious, it is easy to wear and I love the play of textures. It is not a shouty piece of knitwear - it does not go look at me, I'm handknit! - but it is really versatile. It'll live 'round my neck until proper summer hits Scotland.

I have rav'd the cowl here and I recommend trying to pair up very different yarns and textures. My next big knitting project is all about textures too but more on that later.

Now my next project and one which gave me that amazing did I really make that? feel which I rarely get with knitting these days (sad but true).

My first quilt, y'all.

The second weekend workshop took place yesterday and I managed to finish piecing the top, sandwich the layers, quilt the whole thing and do the binding. No wonder I'm exhausted today!

An error on a sewing machine supplier's part meant that instead of freemotion quilting we had to choose quilt patterns that we could finish with straight-stitching. That sudden constraint worked wonders for the class' creativity, I think, and people became very engaged in thinking up quilting designs rather than worrying about getting their patchwork perfect. I chose to do an asymmetrical starburst on top of my (mostly) symmetrical design. It may be difficult to tell by the photo but the starburst is oddly effective. The interplay between the patchwork with its rigid lines (and made from geometric prints) and the asymmetric quilt lines lets your eye travel - and also looks far better than any freemotion attempt on my part would have done.

My good friend Kirsten Marie wondered if I enjoyed quilting and if so what I enjoyed about it.

Honestly, I am not sure if quilting is for me. I am not a very precise crafter - I work best on the basis of intuition and fudging things - and I think you need to be anal rentative into measuring things twice and following rules to really enjoy quilting.

Having said that, I am really bowled over by my first quilt of mine and I really liked seeing it come together. I enjoyed having an idea in my head regarding colour and seeing how that idea panned out.

And I liked how everybody's quilts in my class looked so different because of fabric choice and how personal all the quilts felt as though they really did reflect the personalities of the people making them.

(I think my quilt looks modern, colourful and Scandinavian - I think that runs pretty true to my taste!)

Will I be doing more quilting? Probably, yes. I do think the cost of materials is fairly prohibitive and I stress out during certain parts of the process, but I will probably return to this craft occasionally. I like snuggling up in blankets, after all, and there is something to be said about making your own quilted blanket..

Bluebells

We went to see Patrick Wolf at Oran Mor tonight as part of a belated birthday celebration. And what a good time we had.

I hope you enjoy Bluebells linked above. It's one of my favourite songs. Strangely comforting. Patrick is finally beginning to enjoy some mainstream radio success here in Blightly after having made wonderful music for years. I am a hipster at heart - I liked him better when he made less mainstream stuff, dammit - but it is gratifying to see all his very hard work paying off. Go see him if he plays a concert near you. He's good.

Just Knitting

Sometimes I get so very tired of knitting. No, I do not tire of knitting - that simple enjoyable activity that involves a ball of string and two pointy sticks - but I do tire of certain aspects involved in knitting.

I tire of the one-upmanship I see in the knitting community. That you need to be knitting the latest viral pattern craze in precious hand-spun unicorn yarn from a small island off the coast of Chile to be a cool knitter. Or that coolness equates you knitting crazy Estonian lace at knitting group whilst shrugging off its difficulty with a modest "oh, it's straightforward, really" and frantically counting in your head. I'm currently that last knitter (although my stitch pattern is straightforward, honestly) and I'm even knitting my crazy Estonian lace in an expensive designer yarn. Where is this one-upmanship coming from?

I tire of the idea of "a knitting community" too.

I was recently contacted by another knitter who asked me to share a copyrighted pattern "to support our knitting community". Really? Just because I knit, I am not automatically your new best friend. We share a common interest but I am not just a knitter. My identity has so many other markers that I do not feel automatic kinship with anyone who knits.

Besides, the very idea of a "community" is ridiculous when I see these self-confessed 'yarn snobs' and 'knitteristas' roll their eyes at seeing someone knitting a baby jacket on straight needles using cheap mass-market yarn. Isn't "the knitting community" just another way of saying "exclusive club"?

So, honestly, I needed something to cleanse my palate. I wanted to be reminded why I love knitting so much.

I took my inspiration from the recent Rowan magazine - it is actually turning into one of my favourite resources together with Knit1 Fall/Winter 2008 - and specifically Kaffe Fassett's Unwind Wrap. I looked in my stash, uncovered some yarns that went well together and I sat down to knit. I had no plan, no pattern, and I just used up some spare balls from the stash. No fuss, all freedom.

It felt great. I felt great.

I'm going to weave in my gazillion ends now and then get my partner to shoot a few photos of me wearing my newest project - but I'm not going to make out that it is the most exclusive, most amazing, or super-difficult project ever. Knitting it made me feel good and wearing it (despite the many loose ends) makes me feel good.

But at the end it is just knitting, you know?

Lessons Learned

I have learned several lessons today. 1) I was right to buy more fabric for my first quilt. Remember I felt uneasy about the matchy-ness of my fabrics? I decided to mix up my orange fabrics with some aqua. I rather like the result.

2) I get really, really stressed out about measuring and cutting my pieces. At one point my hands were so shaking so much that I was ordered out of the classroom to get some fresh air. Well, you'd be stressed too if your first go with a rotary cutter resulted in you making a big and very uncalled-for cut into your expensive binding material.

3) I find the sewing part very relaxing and intuitive compared to the cutting. Nothing can go wrong now. Except if you sew wrong bits together but that is what a seam-ripper is for.

4) Seeing how your fabrics look together makes up for a lot of stress.

5) No matter how careful I am when measuring & cutting my pieces, I will need to dip into my scraps for extra squares because I struggle with imperial measurements.

6) And when I get home, I will take a ubiquitous photo of my semi-finished craft project in The Usual Spot.

I have homework for next week: I need to finish sewing all my squares and ironing them because next time we'll be putting the quilt together! I'm slightly terrified of the binding and very apprehensive about the actual quilting, but I'll be fine. My teacher, Bronwen, was a calming, encouraging influence throughout the class and even managed to make me feel accomplished despite my numerous shortcomings.

Also: I loved seeing how the other quilts were shaping up and how much of a difference fabric choice makes.

In knitting, a jumper looks more-or-less the same whether you do it in green, blue or orange. Katherine had chosen to use all bold patterns in teals, blues, and greens. Dr J had gone for one specific print and had picked co-ordinating fabrics based upon that print. Another woman were making the quilt with her god-daughter in mind: pretty, pale pastel colours and tiny prints. We were all using the same layout but the feel of the patchwork blocks were so very, very different. So cool.

Meanwhile I have started a new knitting project - a really easy, mindless little thing that's also a great stash-buster (as long as you don't go out to buy two balls of yarn to match stash yarn like I did..). More on that anon.

Finally, a few random links: + Old love never really dies ..  but the dog is a bonus. Also, Scots don't really look like this. Trust me. + I'm interested in neurology for a number of reasons and this little article answers something that has been nagging me since childhood: why do I see certain shapes if I rub my eyes? + The blog name really bugs me, but the post touches upon things that played a small, but very significant part in me leaving Denmark. + Sound advice for any blogger (not just food blogging).

Fundraiser for Japan

Just a quick update today but what an update. The amazing, AMAZING Tokyo Subway Quilt is being given away by Oh! Fransson as a Japan fundraising effort.

Crafters care.