Author: Kristin Tolle

And now for something completely different… The 2 Day Cape

~ Kristin Tolle ~ Leave a comment

I grew up with Monty Python. As a child I used to belly crawl into my parent’s bedroom and watch lying just at the foot of their bed. Sometimes I’d give myself away by giggling. This week I needed a giggle.

Home from work with the flu and just done with yet another pair of socks, I needed a knitting pick me up. Even so, I also had to have a small knitting project for flying from Seattle to Florida for Christmas, so I cast on the next pair of socks, this time for dad. And then was too sick to travel. Grumpy didn’t do my mood justice.

Regia Socks I Just Finished for Nick
Regia Arne and Carlos Deisgn Line Socks for Dad

Even pouring over online yarn stores didn’t help, so I decided I should look at my queue. That’s when I hit on the pattern Hott Pink. Though the color was off and the design too busy for my liking, it reminded me of the beautiful bespoke cape dress Meghan Markle wore on her solo trip with Queen Elizabeth II.

  • This pattern..
  • And this yarn
  • Just might equal this

I’d bought the yarn a year ago with this project in mind. If anything, I was overdue to work on something just for me.

After gauge checking with a swatch, I went up a needle size to create a bit more give in the fabric. I also made it a bit smaller around, only 42 inches to give a more fitted look. To make sure that it was easy on and off, I kept the design element of ribbing, but went with K1P1 to match better with the seed stitch.

Surrounded by a mountain of notions scattered on my bed, in two days, with only a few backing up (many to get the fit just so) I finished. So much faster and more satisfying than two months for a pair of socks!

Here’s how it turned out! So pleased!

  • K1P1 ribbing on the shoulders
  • Warm and stylish!
  • Super soft, super bulky “Mighty” Yarn

Sock-a-Rama

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Though started before the Blacktop Ferry Socks, the Ultra-fitted socks took considerably longer. Thinner yarn, smaller needles, more stitches to the inch; it all adds up longer time on the needles.

  • Blacktop Ferry Socks
  • Ultra-fitted Socks

I’m headed back out on my international travels so I swung by my LYS and picked up more (not needed) wool and another set of size 0 wood needles (since I broke my last pair). Not sure which ones I’ll take for the trip, but I think I’ll stick with my new ultra-fitted pattern.

Which would you choose?

  • Schachenmayr Regia–the BOLD
  • Lang Jawoll Twin–the subtle
  • Lang Jawoll Color Jaquard–the varied

And yes, I am on a German sock yarn kick. It’s because I’m feeling too lazy to cake the locally made and dyed sock yarn hanks. 🙂

Rock ’em Sock ’em

Extermely Fitted Socks
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Many times, I’ve said, that socks are my least favorite to knit. And yet…

Socks are the first to mind when I cast on these days. Partly, its demand pull (Nick is a sock fiend) and partly it’s what’s in the stash (READ: went on a MASSIVE sock yarn buying spree). Mostly, it is the need for a traveling project.

With a commute like mine from Orcas Island to Seattle (a once a week round trip), I need the packable project. And I must admit, socks are growing on me. They can be hard or easy, depending on the level of sophistication. I’d say, other than extremely custom fitting of Nick’s funny foot, I’m still in the “plain” sock mode as an “intermediate” sock knitter.

  • Extermely Fitted Socks
    Extremely Fitted Socks as a WIP
  • My pattern for extremely fitted socks

I envy the beautiful projects by experienced sockers, with all the intricacies of lace, braids and such. I also started with patterned socks. These days I tend to be more plain and practical, with the exception of fitting. And I must be getting better because this final pair, still on the needles, is my own pattern. Not only is there lots of fitting, it’s got a Turkish cast-on and a German short-row heel.

In the future, I’ll try and make it a download, but with a new job, long commute and very little free time (even for knitting and blogging) that might be a while. Certainly not until they are finished.

For now, I’ll just have to be happy about the Blacktop Ferry Socks I just finished. This happy accident is because I ran out of the Yarnachy Liberty sock wool I started with.

Now you see the blacktop, now you don’t. 🙂

  • Blacktop Ferry Socks
  • Nick on the ferry looking very pleased with his new socks

Wooly Skye

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 1 Comment

In Broadford on Skye, is The Handknitter Having Fun shop. I often find astounding deals of wool there. This year, since socks were my travel project, as if often the case, socks yarn was top of mind. And for another reason as well—I lost a just finished sock on an Edinburgh tram.

Wooly clouds on the Black Cuillins from the Sligachan Hotel

We time our visits to Skye to coincide with the climbing season. This year we were a week later than usual. I expected it to be warmer than it was two years ago when I brought long-johns and wished for t-shirts. This year the opposite was true. It was cold, rainy and blustery. I on one hike I was wearing almost everything I owned, soaked through and got blown off my feet by a gust of wind.

Reverse view from Loch Scaivaig on a sunnier day

Not to say the trip was a bust—not so! I was there for rest and the weather gave me time for knitting and a bit of shopping. I picked up three beautiful sock skeins and started another pair of socks, having brought two projects for the trip. Here are the three skeins which seem to be color inspired by the location.

  • Cream to blue variegated (color of the sea)
  • Shades of gray (color of the sky)

Can’t wait to see how the socks turn out. Too bad they take so long to knit!

NOTE TO SELF: hand dyed—don’t use different skeins and expect them to look like the belong together. This said, in spite of cutting the skein in half and caking it in reverse, the Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball® socks I started are variegating in the most peculiar fashion. Even if I make that mistake, it won’t be *this* different.

Even with taking a ball in the middle and caking it opposite, these socks look VERY different from one another

And Then There Was One

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 1 Comment

I love travel. It’s a good thing, given I travel 33-50% for my work. This means I also like being at home when I have time off.

My husband has a love of Scotland that comes from his youth in the South of England. His father took him to the Isle of Skye when he was fifteen and every year or so, we go back. And for me, it’s all about the hiking and the wool.

The project I brought was a pair of socks using Knitpicks Felici in Stormy Sky (fitting for Scotland). It was a special striped run I’d picked some up at Stitches West last year. And I was so excited to finally use it and hopeful my husband would have a spare pair of socks for hiking.

We used Edinburgh as our basecamp for the trip. We only passed through the city—several times as we came and went from visiting friends and family in Southern England before we headed to Skye. I was just reinforcing a heel when our stop came and I thought I’d safely tucked the sock away, but when we got to the hotel, I was one sock short.

Yes. I did cry. But then I immediately picked up my needles and cast-on another pair.

You gotta get back on that horse and ride it! Am I right?

Hibernation Over–I hope!

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You know you have them. Those UFOs waiting in the closet—sometimes for months and years. You know why you started them and there is even the hope that you’ll come back to them. Yes?

I’ve only once met someone who didn’t have any unfinished objects (UFOs) or a stash because she only crocheted one project at a time. Now she’s a normal person with both. I sometimes have phases of no UFOs. It feels both exhilaratingly hopeful and strangely empty.

This past week, we were doing the usual 3-hour weekly car commute and I needed a project FAST. I couldn’t find my “traveling” project—usually a pair of socks for my air travel carryon. For the car, a big project would have been fine, but I couldn’t lay my hands on the UFO I wanted, an easy and time-consuming afghan at the end of the commute. And given we were up against a ferry crossing, there wasn’t time to dither.

With husband a-foot tapping, there was no time to find a pattern, yarn, notions etc. so I grabbed a hibernating project. You might recognize it from this blog from February of last year, where I was stuck (sleeves). I skipped onto the button band collar where I felt more secure. But this got me to thinking about the different reasons for hibernating projects. Because there are a complex set of reasons for it—and they aren’t always the same!

Trying to do a seamless version of this
Here’s where I got stuck–how to evenly match sleeves
Back on the needles–starting from the collar

So why do projects hibernate? I listed a few of my reasons below:

  1. Got bored (did you really want a project this easy?)
  2. Got tired (happens with LONG projects, small yarns, small needles)
  3. Got stuck (happens at transitions)
  4. Made a fixable mistake and will have to tear it back (otherwise you’d just frog it, no?)
  5. Got interrupted (the “shiny object” syndrome)
  6. Lost a key notion
  7. Didn’t get enough yarn, buttons, etc.…
  8. Can’t find the pattern
  9. Can’t find it

Though I’m a fairly organized person with lots of online patterns, the  last two happen more than I care to admit. My primary ones are 3, 4 and 5—probably in that order.

Which if these seems to be your most common? Are there others?

From a Toque to a Beanie in One Heat Cycle

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There’s a lovely young lady that makes my protein shakes at the club where I work out. Every time I see her, it brightens my day. She calls me by name, remembers what I order and she’s 3 dimensional; she talks about her life, work and laughs at herself. In short, she’s a good soul.

One morning she was talking about wanting a hat now that the weather is turning cold and though she’d been looking she could not find one she liked.  “What color?” I asked. “A pretty dark blue; not as dark as navy”. She wanted She also it to be ‘slouchy.’ “You know what I mean?” “Yes,” I replied, “I do.”

And what better thing is there to do, than to use a skill you have for a good soul? Nothing. I was on a mission to make her a toque. It would only take a day or so and it would be a nice thing to do for a nice person. Colorwise, my mind instantly went to Azul Profundo by Malabrigo—but I worried about variation in the varigation—some skeins are lighter than others. Ordering it was a risk.

Malabrigo in Azul Profundo. I bought two skeins and some matching beads to make a beaded Spiral Scarf
Woolfolk TOV resting on the new blanket

That weekend I was at Tolt Yarn and Wool with a friend from Yorkshire, UK and happened on Woolfolks’s Tov, 6 T. I knew the minute I laid eyes on it, that I’d found THE color. Heaven knows what 6 T means, but ‘in person’ it is a richly saturated darkish blue nearing teal without the inky blackness of navy. I paired it with a dark gray—also baby cashmere—Sublime Yarn–Tittlemouse.

I was so thrilled when I finished. It just needed a wash and a block, but it ended up in the drier with a few other superwash woolens when my husband did the laundry. Oh! No! Even still damp, I could see it had felted into a beanie—and not a toque that would fit the need. 

Before
After

So, I’m on the hunt for replacement yarn and this time in a superwash wool. In the meantime, I’ve got a tiny beanie for my child-sized head.

*head shake*

Shades of Gray

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It’s always a bit gray in the Puget Sound in the winter. Oddly this weekend and past it has been sunny, but my knitting starts haven’t. They’ve been gray, gray, gray.

I’ve been slow to post because I’m traveling a lot. And because I’ve returned to the road, I need small projects to take on my trips. My last pair of socks, two-at-a-time, toe-ups, were a perfect airplane project for two consecutive trips to DC and India.

This week I cast on the yarn Felici Stormy Sky from Knit Picks that I recently purchased at Vogue Knitting Live in San Francisco. Right now they are barely more than the Turkish cast on I learned at the event. But with all my international trips on the horizon, they will be socks soon enough!

The pre-trip cast-on

I also cast on a hat for myself I call Greywurm. I’m using the Wurm pattern and two Sublime Yarn baby cashmere and silk grays—Skipper and Tittlemouse. Since it is a quick knit, it’s not a great travel project. But I’m dying to use these beautiful yarns I won in a Woolful drawing also want a “get ‘er done” project I can feel good about in the way I never do with socks or larger projects like the next one I started just last night.

Sublime in So Many Ways!

The last project is another Squares Throw in Cascade’s Tivoli; color: Fog. My mother has been trying to get me to knit her an afghan in bright aqua, but I was drawn to this project because of how beautiful the brown one that sits at the end of my bed looks—and that this one was already in the queue (not that I stick to the queue order—ever).

This said, it will go great in the spare bedroom and it will make an excellent “lap” project for the car and ferry commutes to and from Orcas Island.

Simple Squares for my Circles Duvet

Though I always think I should knit summer things in winter, it just never turns out that way. All I can think about is getting and staying warm.

How about you? What’s your go-to winter project?

It’s the Big Stuff

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“Don’t sweat the small stuff”, my mom’s favorite saying. And it is projects for her and lots of big projects dominating my knitting.

Domestic projects are still ruling the day. Mainly because they are simple and square. That’s about all I can handle right now.

And as I come to the end of another simple squares throw, I’m eyeing my next BIG project.

Simple Squares for my Circles Duvet
Woolfolk TOV resting on the new blanket

My mom has put in an order for a long bathmat and a chenille afghan. I let her pick out both colors from online and when they arrived, the gold of the cotton bathmat seems too subtle and the turquoise chenille of the afghan seems—LOUD. Just look at this Ice Yarns mountain!

An Ice Yarn Mountain of Baby Chenille
Odd Balls to Break Up All the Turquoise

I think I’ll do the bathmat first, because it will be quick and easy.

With the afghan, I’m hoping to use up a few more of my odds and ends; some dishie my husband didn’t like for kitchen towels and some sparkly stuff that grandma had in dribs and drabs.

And for my next trick?

Well, I’ve fallen in love with Purl Soho’s Shadow Study Throw. I found some Louet Gems on sale and though my first order didn’t quite work out, I think I’ve got a good plan for what comes next.

Purl Soho Pattern
My Chosen Colors

 

Weekend Knitting Double Header

You can get this cool quantum t-shirt at Zazzle.com
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It’s been a CRAZY spring. I’ve been burning the candle at all three ends.

And what happens the minute you slow down—you get sick of course! And while I really dislike the brain fog and lost time of working on my teaching materials, I got a lot of knitting done while I was confined to bed with a nasty cold.

The good news is that I had several easy projects on the needles and lots of time where I could only really do mentally passive activities—simple knitting among them (TV watching being the other—reruns of The Expanse anyone?).

Cotton Raglan Mock Turtleneck

I finished another bathmat–this one for the island house bathroom, I’ve taken to called “Jeff’s bathroom” due to it being across the hall from the bedroom where the inimitable Jeff Dozier spent time with us during his knee convalesce. And a very simple mock turtleneck sweater design by Adrienne Vittadini  from an old Vogue Knitting Magazine. Vintage yarn for a vintage pattern.

I’m hoping my brain function returns soon, but for now, there’s nothing like knocking off a twofer of simple WIPs in my project queue.