Fire & Ice: The Final Chapter (Updated below)

Fire & Ice is finally done!
Yippee! Pass the red wine!
It's been a wonderful summer of scheming 'n dreaming, dyeing 'n spinning and, of course, knitting and more knitting. Between all the knitting was a fair bit of frogging.

She's finally done and I lurve her.
For those interested in the back story and the journey to this point, check out these entries.
For those that just want to look at knitting porn, I present to you the Fire & Ice final photo shoot!

Da sleeves. Initially it was going to be a basic steek and seam sleeve. Then I thought since I was knitting to fit my torso, I might as well knit the fit my shoulder as well. So I opted for short rows to create a bend to fit around my shoulder and then a few extra short rows to add some material for the side of the collar. It took a couple of evolutions to get the sleeves right but in the end it worked out grand!


Da forearm. Since the cabling was inspired by designs on Viking armour, I wanted to bring some of the warrior elements of their often violent sagas into the sweater. I created a sort of knitted wrist plates to echo armour.
The sweater as a whole was designed to look structured and sculpted. I wanted it to look solid, like it could hold it's shape even when I'm not wearing it, like armor.
Here's the torso and the two sleeves before seaming.








Here's it all put together!
Da front!










Close-up of da back.
The collar was done in a simple seed stitch to give a bit of texture. I opted for a square collar to echo the angular nature of the cabling.
As an extra bonus, the collar also frames my 'Tao' tattoo perfectly. So fitting to have that word framed by a sweater that carries the story of the joining of fire & ice to create the world.

My triquetra tattoo is also peeking out in the corner. The triple goddesses, (especially Morrígan) are definitely with me when I'm wearing this sweater!

Well, that's my 100 mile fiber project for the summer. Not a moment too soon. The evenings are getting chilly and I'm ready to get going on my next 100 mile fiber project!

Cheers!

ETA:The Inside Story of Fire & Ice










This photo is for you, Erin :P
Hop onto a ferry and get over here for your short row lesson!

Thanks everybody for all your warm and wonderful comments. It makes my heart melt to hear all these encouraging comments. To all those that can't fathom making such a sweater, I would like to point out that I haven't used any techniques that most intermediate knitters don't know.
In fact, here's a list of the main techniques used and links to some:
Knit
Purl
Long tail cast on
2x2 ribbing
Knitting in the round
Cabling (without a cable needle)
Stranding
Stockinette
Short Rows
Basketweave stitch
Seed stitch
3 needle bind off
Increase
Decrease

Even if you don't know the above techniques, you've already learned the 2 main techniques: knitting & purling. Some might say those are the most difficult of all knitting techniques because they are the first. They are the initial steps into a new world, one that is unfamiliar and often, awkward to navigate through. They are taken without any prior experience that this path will lead to anywhere but to a knarled up headache. They are taken with no promise of reward. Often they are accompanied with anxiety, confusion, insecurity and frustration.
But soon those steps become so familiar, many of us can tread the steps of knitting & purling without looking and constantly checking a map.

In my knitted heart I do hope to nudge, shove, kick other knitters into uncharted (pardon the pun) knitting waters and to inspire them to try things that aren't written down in patterns. If nobody tried new techniques or experimented we'd all be knitting big blocky garter stitch togas :P

I do hope my knitting encourages other knitters to join me off the beaten path. I would very much enjoy their company :) There's a vast and exciting knitting landscape for us to explore. With the learning of each new lesson, we all come back to the original blessing of when we first learned how to turn a couple of sticks and some string into something, anything and everything.

Be daring. Heck, be downright reckless with your knitting. Nobody died from knitting. Some might have been had their corneas seared by neon orange acrylic yarn, but that heals eventually.

In The Yarn Harlot's "At Knit's End" there is a quote from Henry Ford, "One of the greatest discoveries a (wo)man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do."

And as the Yarn Harlot says herself: Be Fearless with Knitting!

Icy sleeves for Fire & Ice

What? The end of August already? There're mooncakes being sold at Fairway and it's getting dark way too soon. Yikes!

I've decided to put off starting anything new until I've finished the Fire & Ice sweater. I've given myself the much the spring and all of summer to dye, spin and knit this sweater.

I've just finished spinning and knitting one sleeve:














The bottom half of it is in basketweave.














I love the diagonal woven effect. This stitch constricts since it's got a whole line of crossovers on every other row. With this in mind, I opened up the stitches to a stockinette right below my elbow. This allows the sleeve be fitted for my forearm an then to widen up for my elbow and upper arms without having to increase a single stitch! I'm not sure if that makes me smart or lazy. Probably a little bit of both :P

I decided to stick with just the ice colourway since I didn't want the sleeves to compete with the cabling on the body.
Here's the body up to near the armpit. It's going to be a yoke sweater. For once, I'm knitting a yoke from the bottom up. I did it this way partly because I wasn't sure how the cabling would fit on the sweater. But mostly I did it because I was undecided what kinda collar/neckline I wanted to use. I'm still undecided. I guess the yarn will tell me once I get to that point.














Close up of the cables:














Sleeves and sweater body together:














Last night I began spinning up the yarn for the second sleeve. Hopefully the sleeve will be spun and knitted up by the end of the week. However, I've got a pretty packed schedule and anyways, I still haven't figured out what sort of collar I'm going to use.

Happy knitting!
Jen

Socks for a unrequited summer

My Carved Jade Socks are finally done. I made the final push through the final few inches last night with the help of a glass of red wine and lots of good, dark, organic chocolate. The knitting juice was definitely needed to get through the home stretch. Not a glass too soon. I woke up to another soggy, grey Saturday morning.

Why, dear summer must you be so mean and cold? Why must you nip at my tomato plants. I've offered you a garden full of edible sunshine. I've waxed poetic about your long weeks of sexy heat. I've sacrificed a day timer of weekends to frolic with you. And this? This is how you return my love? With cold, miserable rain and then slaps of unbearable heat?

Was it something I said? Are you still upset because I told winter that I loved her best? I had to. Did you see the torrents of rain she was sending over this way? Did you see her tightrope walking just above the freezing mark? Tempting me with peekaboo glimpses of good ice-climbing weather? I thought we were over this. You're no better than spring :P

So now I have a new pair of Carved Jade socks to see me through the end of this stoneyhearted season. For more background info on the socks, check out this earlier entry
Here's the photo montage of my new socks. Enjoy!

The requisite front view










The requisite back view.












Requisite bird's eye view







Requisite art shot.









Shhhh. It's the elusive Carved Jade toothless shark.

Carved Jade Socks

At the Saltspring Island Natural Fibre Fair, I picked up a few gems, including a couple of skeins of sock yarn from Indigo Moon. Trish Moon, dyeing diva, has just begun offering a line of hand-dyed superwash fingering sock yarn. Like the rest of her products, many are dyed with natural dyes.

Most striped or variegated sock yarn aren't my cup of tea. I find them a tad too funky and, well, too stripey (I know, that's probably not a real word). However, Trish's colourways are right up my alley. I fell madly in love with this as soon as I saw it.
It was labeled "Olive" but it reminded me of the gorgeous, subtle colours of unworked jade.

At under $13 a pop, I picked up 2 skeins and happily let my imagination whiz about with ideas. I finally decided on a pair of 'Carved Jade Socks'


The socks are inspired by the incredible carved jade pieces I saw during my China trip last year.
Jade Disc inside the Forbidden City in Beijing, China.








Carved Dragon Ball. These pieces are moving spheres carved within each other. It's just mindboggling what goes into making a piece like this.






Carved Jade piece. This is one of my favorite jade pieces that I got to see. It's so delicate and intricate.







With those pieces in mind, I unvented a simple stitch pattern that combined twisted stitches and a basic lace movement to create the effect of jade carvings. I say unvented because chances are, it's a stitch pattern that has been unvented already.

Here's one sock done and waiting for a mate. It's a basic toe-up pattern with a Turkish Cast on, basic increased toe and short row heel.






I guess it got tired of waiting all by itself and climbed onto my foot:)







Here's the second one on the needles and slowly getting worked up. My dance card has been busy this past week and the Fire & Ice sweater has been monopolizing my attention lately. However, I'm set on finishing this by tonight. However, it is gorgeous and sunny outside and I'm already thinking mojitos on the patio.
Odds are 3-1 that I get it done by tonight.
Any takers?

Jen

Moebius Cape Pattern

This is meant to be a general bare bones pattern. You supply the knitty gritty flesh :)

Yarn: Indigo Moon Wild Silk Yarn, Fleece Artist Italian silk or any silk or lace yarn.
Yardage: Heck, I don't know. A 300-400 yards. More if you want to sweep up the dust bunnies while you walk :p
Needles: 4 mm 47" circular (or longer) I used Addi Turbos
Gauge: It's a freaking Moebius lace cape, whatever gauge you get is the right one.

As you can probably tell, I’m not a diligent pattern follower. It’s a good thing that lace blocks so well :)

WARNING: Knitting rambling below. For those that are Moebius knitting experts or want to live life dangerously, please pop straight down the Moebius Blossom Cape Pattern)

This project is an opportunity to try out a new lace stitch pattern or to show off a much-loved stitch pattern. It’s also a great project for beginners because even the simpliest lace patterns look great. In fact, I’d suggest that you stick with simplier patterns with 4-8 row repeats. The number of total stitches is dependent on the lace pattern you choose. In the first portion, I also incorporated a row of short-rowed waves. For the sake of saving a few brain cells, the number of stitches for the base of this short-rowed pattern is the same as the number of stitches of your lace pattern.

So for me that number was 14. I casted on 217 stitches. My total number of stitches was 434 (see below). I repeated the lace and short row pattern 31 times for each cycle.

Begin by casting on with Moebius Cast On - I used Cat Bordhi's Moebius cast on. Here's written instructions from a episode of Knitty Gritty that she did. It’s pretty much the same motion as a provisional cast on but with a looped circular needle. The motion makes the yarn bob and weave figure 8’s around your right needle and the coiled cable below. It was absurdly frustrating to figure it out the first time and that third glass of red wine didn't help either! But once I got the hang of it, it was easy peasy!

More Moebius ramblings for beginners:
Now, keep in mind that each stitch that you cast on is actually 2 stitches, one on your right hand needle that is fed from the top cable and a matching stitch on the bottom cable (it'll make sense once you actually do it) . So 200 stitches actually is 400 stitches in total. Take into consideration the stitch pattern you mainly want to use and choose a multiple of that which is closest to 200. If you're a loose knitter, cast on less, a tight knitter, get a drink and loosen up :P

Before you begin knitting, throw on a stitch marker to mark your starting point.
This method has you knitting from the centre of the shawl out, so there is no beginning edge. You will be knitting on both sides of a coiled circular needle (the reason why you want a longer needle). You will knit one coil around and when you reach back what you think is the beginning but the marker is on the other coil, you're only halfway and you still have to knit the other (bottom) half.
The end result is that when you knit a whole row round from the beginning marker and around both coils and back to the beginning marker so it's sitting on your left needle again, you've actually knitted 2 rows of knitting. But it will be noted in the pattern as one row of knitting. Is that as clear as mohair mud? For more ( & infinitely better) details, check out Cat's book from your friendly neighbourhood library.

Make sure that the cable only crosses at one point after you’ve done casting on!

So the outline of the shawl is as follows:

1- Moebius cast on with Colour A and knit for 10 or so rows in total

2- Colour B for another 10 or so rows.

3- Mark of ½ of stitches and start short rows back and forth to form the back.

4- For each pattern cycle decrease by one pattern repeat on each end.

5-Continue until it’s long enough for ya.

6- Reintroduce Colour A for a few rows.

7- Cast off with both yarns.

Here’s the fleshed out Moebius Blossom Cape Pattern:

1-With Colour A, Moebius cast on 217 stitches and knit 5 rows

2- Make waves by short rowing in 14 stitch grouping as follows. K14. Turn work and P13. Turn work and K12. Turn work and P11. Turn work and K10. Turn work and P9. Turn work and K8. Turn work and P7. Turn work and K6. Turn work and P5. (I didn’t bother wrapping stitches at the end of each turn. It’s lace, it’s supposed to have holes)

3-Turn work back to RS and knit to marker.

4- Repeat Step 2 & 3 for the rest of the row (until the beginning marker shows back up on your left hand needle.)

5- Replace Colour A with Colour B. I used the Russian Join method. Begin lace pattern. I chose Barbara Walker’s 'Little Parachute' from Charted Knitting Designs. It’s a 14 stitch pattern of 6 rows.

Colour A in the centre and here I'm just beginning the lace pattern in Colour B. See how the coiled cable loops through both the top and bottom of the knitting and only crosses once.

6- Knit until the Colour B portions are each the same width as the Colour A portion.

7- Mark off 210 stitches (about one half of total stitches)

8- Continue lace pattern in the marked off portion. At end of marked off portion, turn work and work the WS. Keep in mind that before you were knitting in the round so all your knitting was always facing RS. Now you’re knitting in the flat so you might want to adjust your pattern to WS knitting for every other row. Instead of blowing a brain fuse, I simply added a row of purl for all my WS rows and continued with Row 2 of the pattern in the next RS row. This worked fine for the Little Parachutes pattern since the added row didn’t interrupt the pattern too much and it looked like I had two stitch patterns, making me looking smarter than I am.

9- At the end of each pattern cycle, decrease the number of pattern repeats by 1 at each end for the next cycle. So I started with 15 pattern repeats, then 13, then 11, then 9 and so on.

10- Continue until it’s long enough for you.

11- Reintroduce Colour A but leave Colour B on. I just left Colour B hanging off my work and loosely looped Colour A in the stitch below. Afterwards, I wove in the end of Colour A in my knitting.

12 –With Colour A knit one row. When you come to the short-rowed back portion, the end of each pattern cycle will be a little step/gap between pattern repeats. Pick up stitches along the edge. I picked up 6 stitches for each ‘step’.

13- Colour A - K2tog, YO for the next row.

14- Knit your favorite edging (I used Fan and Feather) in Colour A for 4 rows.

15- With both Colours A & B bind off loosely.

Close up. Here you can see the short-row waves in the lighter yarn (Colour A). I really like how the a couple rows of Colour A at the end helps bring out the shape of the edge.






The back. I'm only 5'4" so anything too big will just swallow me up. I aimed for the bottom edge on the back to hit me near my waist which is how I decided how long it was going to be.






Well, I hope this is helpful to you all. I'd appreciate any feedback you have on the pattern and the end product if you try it. I'm not a very experienced pattern writer (as you can tell) and that's compounded by the fact that I'm not a very good pattern follower. I left out the stitch by stitch details of the stitch patterns on purpose. I would like to encourage others to use their own intuition, imagination and improvisation to fill in the knitty gritty details and start knitting beyond the pattern.

Happy Knitting!
Jen

Moebius Blossom Cape & Flying Carpet Yarn

I'm just recovering from the Saltspring Island Natural Fiber Festival this past weekend. It was an amazing event with a range of exhibits, vendors and events. There were demos and silent auctions and lots and lots of fibre folk.





I managed the finish up my Moebius cape, which I've named the Blossom Cape, just in time for the festival. The dark purple yarn is hand-dyed wild silk from Trish Moon at Indigo Moon Silks on Gabriola Island. Trish had a stand at the festival and I just had to pick up a few skeins of hand-dyed sock yarn from her. Many of her yarns are naturally dyed and she offers an incredible range of colours and yarn types.
The purple silk is gorgeous and my pictures don't do it justice. The colour isn't as flat as in the photos. There's actually a beautiful, organic shifting and shimmering of different shades of deep purple.
The variegated yarn is leftover yarn from my Winged Series of shawls. I believe it was a Fleece Artist yarn.
I had wanted another warm weather shawl but, as mentioned before, I'm not very good open shawls and the whole shawl pin deal. Also, I don't like having a big, hunking knot tying the ends together. I wanted something of a certain size that would give me enough range of motion and a good dose of drama. Really, why bother making a shawl that doesn't have drama???
So my answer to this conundrum was a shaped Moebius that would mimic the silhouette of a cape without needing to be knotted in the front or pinned. I knitted up a the basic Moebius strip until it was several inches wide (or long, I guess, depending on how your measure a Moebius. Then I short-rowed half of length which would give me extra length in the back and sides. I decreased one pattern repeat on each side for every cycle of the short row.
In the end the bottom half of the moebius actually is a flattened semi-circle. Is that as clear as mud?
I did this mainly because I wanted a longer/wider shawl but didn't want a lot of material twisted up in the center. I wanted something that would flow nicely and drape at all angles. The short-rowing provided all these elements nicely.

ETA - I got a bunch of requests for a pattern for this piece. So I'm working on a Fast & Dirty pattern for the Moebius Blossom Cape.
The festival also held a Fibre to Fashion competition. There were two teams of 5 that had to card, spin and weave a shawl within 6 hours!
It was so much fun!





Here's the spinners going. You can practically see the smoke coming out of those wheels!







My partner in crime and I left Saltspring in a blissful, fluffy daze. We were probably one of the few that actually didn't mind the grey damp weather that has blanketed the Rusty Coast. We were looking forward to spinning all night long.
I practiced some pretty hard-core restraint with my festival purchases but there were a few things that I couldn't resist including some spray painted pencil roving of Blue Face Leicester and silk from Hummingbird Fibre Arts. I couldn't walk away from the display. I just kept circling it, drooling over the roving and all the smashing colours.
I got to spin some up yesterday. Here it is:









I was aiming for a fingerling yarn and came pretty close. The colours came up even more beautiful than I anticipated. Doesn't it look like flying carpet colours? Rich and intense and so full of possibilities.

Have a great week everybody!

Jen

Fleece up to my yin yang

I've been dying and spinning yarn for my Fire & Ice sweater every spare moment I've got. Though June's soggy and cool weather has put a damper on my mountain and ocean playtime, it has been perfect spinning weather. The west coast has been pounded with a couple of good late spring thunderstorms.

My dining room has been turned into a fleece factory. Instead of curtains, I have fleece hanging up to dry and the dining room table has been converted into a carding table/fleece 'painting palette'.

I've done most of the dying . I've got my Ice fleece:









and my Fire Fleece:









As my first big dying and spinning project, I'm using this sweater as an opportunity to learn and experiment with various dying and carding methods. I'm aiming for a navajo plied sport weight yarn but right now I'm just thrilled that it's spinning up relatively evenly.
Here's some batts that have gone through various carding techniques. I have about 3 basic shades of blue and some purple for the Ice colourway. For the Fire, I'm working with 2 shades of yellow, orange and a red.









By varying how I feed my drum carder, the number of times I card it and how I layer the fleece, I'm slowly learning that there is a plethora of ways to create different colourways.
Here's some of the yarn I've spun up so far:









Here's a couple of swatches of some pattern's I'm working on for the sweater. I was inspired by the patterns in Eslebeth Lavold's 'Viking Patterns for Knitting'. I wanted to a viking knot that was a tad more elongated and angular than the ones shown in the book so I took a couple basic knot ideas from that book, threw them together, added a pinch of this and that, gave it a twist and this is what I got:
They're looking a tad Elvish which is a good thing in my book. I did a basic outline of what I wanted onto graph paper and then penciled in the exact stitch pattern as I knitted it up. Once I'm done, I have a graph and a complete swatch to remind me of what I'm shooting for. Also this serves as my swatch and give me an idea of how the yarn will knit up like and how the colours will play against each other. From here, I've adjusted and fine tuned my carding and spinning to suit my tastes.

I'm really liking how the two colourways are playing against each other. I think I'm going to stick with the Ice colour as the background and the Fire for the cabling simply because I look better with cool colours next to my skin.

I know it seems like a lot of work to do up the swatches. I've learned that when I'm working out an original pattern with a few spicy techniques, it's worthwhile to do up a swatch and notate the stitches as I knit them, instead of drawing up a graph completely and knitting from there. I know there are knitting designers that can just draw up stuff onto a graph that looks just like what they want it be knitted up. They are the knitting equivalent of Beethoven composing the 9th Symphony when he was completely deaf, IMHO, and I bow down to them. This knitting monkey isn't quite there yet. I'd rather frog a swatch than half a sweater.

Technically, this is not cabling because both the cables and the background are all done in stockinette in 2 seperate yarns. So it's twist stitches with a few cable needle moves. I found in an earlier swatch that a purl background when using 2 yarns doesn't provide the same receding affect that occurs when using only 1 yarn. Stockinette provides the a nice basic background and as a bonus, it makes it super easy to knit up in the round. Though the end product looks complicated, the actually knitting is nothing more than stranding with a few twist stitches and the odd cabling move when it's done in the round.

To keep me from being completely obsessed with the Fire & Ice sweater, I've started a mobieus shawl with hand-dyed wild silk from Trish Moon at Moon Woven Studios.
Maybe I'll have it done in time for the Saltspring Island Natural Fibre Festival later on this month.

It's my no-brainer project for now though it being silk and a lace pattern, it has a 2 glasses of wine limit before it's in danger of turning into a rat's nest.

Have a great week!