Off to Paris

All right, I am off to France. I will tell you everything about my trip when I come back. Have a great week!

Fixing Up the Blog

I've been hoping to add a feature to this blog that would show similar posts to each blog entry. I found LinkWithin and installing it was easy as pie. However, that set off a storm of other work. First I had to change my blog template to widen it. I did that and then realized that some of the posts LinkWithin links to had no title. (I only added the ability to add titles to blog entries about 1 1/2 years ago.) So I'm laboriously going through blog posts since January 2003 to add titles. I also have to make a new blog header. Please bear with me while I figure all this out.

Here's the vista from this morning; we had a slight dusting of snow last night and you can still see it on the Sandia Mountains.

Nothing But Links

In September Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting book will be reprinted; it has a new cover and the blurb says it is expanded. I think I'll wait to hear about the expanded part to determine if I should buy another copy. The photo above is a close-up from my St. Enda sweater from the book; the finished sweater turned out large enough for DH and I to fit into it at the same time!

GLOVES

I wanted to link to the work of a wonderful glove designer, Asa Tricosa. I am especially in love with her Io Gloves.

COLORWORK

HERE is a free pattern for a pretty Latvian hat pattern that uses Satakieli yarn.

Check out Cynthia Wasner's (cwoz on Ravelry) Norsk Needlework site. I am especially in love with her Quaker Sampler sweater with matching mittens.

I don't recall how I even found EvaL8 on Flickr but check out the embroidered felted mittens at the bottom of the page. If you scroll through her photos you'll also find some wonderful stranded shawls.

I greatly enjoy Johanne Landin's Born to Knit blog. She designs colorwork accessories patterns and lives in Sweden. The blog is in English and contains beautiful photos.

HERE is Jorid Linvik's pattern shop - she does a lot of wonderful stranded designs featuring animals. I love her cat socks.

Jessica Tromp is offering a beautiful stranded cardigan pattern for free; the Noors Vest uses DK weight yarn.

I'm considering making these spectacular Nordic Kathrine socks by Ellen Haugland the next time I'm in the mood to knit socks.

This free pattern for the La Gran Fair Isle pillow is a good stash buster and it only uses 2 colors per row.

PATTERNS FOR CHARITY

P/HOP stands for Pennies for Hours of Pleasure and is a knitting fundraiser for Doctors without Borders. They have a few pretty stranded sock patterns and you decide how much you want to donate when you download the pattern.

Things are looking good!

Things are looking better today for my trip to France on Saturday. I am keeping my fingers crossed. I have picked a project to take with me on the plane. I will show you tomorrow.

SockPixie is Getting Ready

Well, friends, there will be no new colorways this weekend, as I am getting ready for my trip to France, hoping that my determination will convince the ash cloud floating over Paris to clear.

The Mysteries of Yarn Dominance

There are many differences of opinion in the world of stranded color knitting - how to hold the yarns, what to do about floats, and what the term Fair Isle even means. There is one debated issue, however, that is experienced differently by each knitter - yarn dominance.

Here are four general yarn dominance "rules". These rules are usually the case but not always.

1. If you carry two colors per row, one color will appear more prominent or dominant.

2. If you are a two-handed color knitter, the yarn held in your LEFT hand will be dominant.

3. No matter how you hold the two yarns (even if you hold two yarns in one hand) the color that strands BELOW the other color will be more prominent. (Look at the floats on the reverse of your work and you'll see that one color's floats will strand above or below the other.)

4. You should never switch how you are holding the yarns in the middle of a chart or motif.

Look closely at something stranded you've knit and try to determine if the stitches with each yarn are exactly the same size. Often when you knit with two colors, one color will be carried more loosely and thus the stitches will be larger. I've even heard a theory that the stitches made with one color look a bit larger because the float above is pushing the stitch out a bit. However if you knit with two colors for a really long time, you'll probably notice both colors even out over time. Knitters who are new to stranded color knitting will probably see the most significant difference in the size of their stitches with each color. 

I knit the above swatches to show yarn dominance but I wasn't able to create as much of a visible difference as I'd hoped.  Anyway, in the top swatch I held the black yarn in my LEFT hand (where I usually put foreground yarns) and switched it for the bottom swatch. You can see that the black stitches in the top swatch appear a bit larger and the white stitches appear larger in the bottom swatch. HERE is another source that shows front and reverse photos of yarn dominance.

I think the first time I read that the yarn held in the left hand is NOT always more prominent for every single knitter was in Joyce Williams' book Latvian Dreams. I've heard from dozens of knitters on Ravelry who agree that these rules do not apply to them. Some insist they have no dominant yarn at all and some have told me that after a good blocking they could no longer tell which yarn was dominant.

Meg Swansen, Amy Detjen, and Joyce Williams state in the Fair Isle book Sweaters from Camp,"Which color in which hand? For the sake of sanity, we proclaim there is no right or wrong method, since results and desired appearance vary so greatly. The strand carried in the right hand may be prominent for one knitter; another may find the left-hand wool to be dominant and a third knitter may have perfect balance between hands."

In my Stranded Color Knitting booklet I advise new color knitters not to switch how they're holding the two yarns through a project but alas there are even exceptions to this as well. In the Dale of Norway Lake Louise headband shown above I held the white yarn in my right hand so it would be a background yarn. It looks good EXCEPT in the very center of the design. Those white stitches appear to recede. I didn't even notice this until later (the headband was a rush job) but I wish I'd switched and held the white yarn in my left hand (where for me at least the stitches look more prominent) just for those few center rows.

How do you determine what colors in a chart to make dominant? That is totally up to you and if you are one of the knitters who experiences yarn dominance you can use it to your advantage to make part of a design stand out more. If you're doing a design with no particular design focal point (like a checkerboard design) or a project with a zillion color changes, make it easier on yourself by choosing ahead of time to just make the light or darker colors dominant.

I'd really love to hear other knitter's comments on this issue, especially from those of you who experience things differently than the usual "rules". What are your experiences with yarn dominance?

Best Dale of Norway News EVER!!

Today's extremely exciting news is that Dale of Norway is now releasing their pattern booklets FREE electronically according to Nora Dereli of Allegro Yarns in this Ravelry post. No word if they are going to re-release their older patterns but if so I'd be in heaven. (Please Dale of Norway do it!!!)

Anyway there are currently two free downloads on the Allegro Yarns web site with more to come - the much sought after Commemorative Collection (with the wonderful Whistler maple leaf sweater plus 4 more sweaters and lots of great hats as well) that was going for big bucks on Ebay and their 2010 Vancouver Olympic sweater that also includes matching socks, hat, mittens, and baby items. Scroll down to download the two booklets at the bottom of THIS PAGE. Imagine being able to easily increase the size of some of their tiny charts. Really - this is just great news for those of us who love Nordic designs.

When I receive yarn for designing a new project I always ask the company to choose the colors for me. I am planning on doing a 4-color hat design and here is what Carol of Sunday Knits sent me. The yarns are really lovely and one cool thing they do is offer two sizes of skeins for colorworkers who might need just a small amount of one color. She sent two skeins of tweedy Brigadoon, a skein of Angelic which is a merino/angora blend and a skein of their Merino line Eden. All are sport weight so should work well together in a hat.

Ripple Crochet Blanket

Yesterday, after I posted about my crochet ripple blanket, some of you asked for more information on it.

This is basically my version of a ripple blanket and I am sure there are many similar ones on the internet. Ripples are created by adding and removing stitches. For my blanket I chose to create the decreases by skipping 2 stitches thus creating a decorative hole, and the increases by putting 3 stitches in a single stitch. I am using a double crochet throughout. My blanket is very large at 334 sts (a multiple of 11+4). I want to make sure that we can all fit under it!

  For the yarn I picked Brown Sheep's  Cotton Fleece, an 80% Cotton, 20% Wool blend, in a worsted weight, perfect for summer crocheting.

The orange is Wild Orange, the green Willow Leaf, the yellow Gold Dust, the plum Hearty Merlot, the darkest red is Salmon Berry Red, the lighter red is Barn Red, and the fuschia is Cherry Moon. I am just crocheting 2 rows of each color, and once I am done with the color sequence I start over.

I still have a long way to go. But the trick with these large projects is just to sit back, relax, and crochet without rushing, just enjoying the process, and from time to time pausing to appreciate the colors, and the dimensional qualitites of the blanket.

Chamrousse Cashmere Gloves

I have an amazing talent for always choosing colors that are impossible to photograph accurately. I finally gave up getting it right for these gloves and just went with the photos that looked the best. I'm calling these the Chamrousse Cashmere Gloves - years ago I spent a day in beautiful Chamrousse, France trying in vain to learn how to ski. Instead I got a hair cut and had a great day.

These gauntlet gloves use 3 skeins of Elann's Peruvian Baby Cashmere - they feature a peasant thumb, tapered ribbing and an I-cord bow through an eyelet row. They are the simplest glove pattern I've ever done and I wish I had time to knit another pair in black. They come in two sizes and the photos show the small size. The pattern is currently available at Lulu (print and .PDF version) and at Ravelry and Patternfish. I decided I liked the bow better on the inside of the wrists rather than outside.

And finally, here is a photo closer to the actual color (claret).

Knitters are the Best

This morning when I logged into my blogger account I found a comment by Marie-Odile from Paris inviting me to come join her knitting group when I am in Paris. You have no idea how happy that made me!

Their Tricot cafe meets at Le Pain Quotidien on place du marche St Germain from 6 to 10 p.m. I will be coming back from Deauville, and heading directly there.

Which reminds me, what knitting will I be bringing to France? 6 hours on the plane, plus a couple hours of waiting at the airport... I could make a lot of progress on a very exciting and secret project...

I am very tempted to bring my crochet chevron blanket too... It is bright, and cheery, and it makes me think of my family, I picked one color for each one of us, the deep red for Miss SockPixie, the fuschia for Little Miss SockPixie, the Plum for Mr. SockPixie, the bright red for Young Mr. SockPixie, the green for Little Mr. SockPixie, the Orange for me, and the sunny yellow, for Tiny Pixie the little baby that left us so quickly, but is still in our hearts.

Paris, Here I Come!!!

Paris! Here I come! I am so happy, I am going home to celebrate Miss SockPixie's birthday!
I have not been back to France in 12 years!

 I was crying with joy when Mr SockPixie said he would take time off to be with the children so I could go, and when my parents offered me the plane ticket.

I told them this was the best present that anyone could ever get. Being with my girl for her birthday makes me the happiest woman on earth.

I will arrive on the 25th of April, the exact day of her birthday!

Paris in the Spring

You know that my oldest daughter is in Paris at the moment. My thoughts have been with her in Paris with her. And I have to admit, I miss Paris... So this week, I created colorways that remind me of Paris, and in particular spring in Paris.

In my memory, Paris is full of colors and songs in the spring. I sang songs by Piaf and Yves Montand while I was creating the colorways...

Here is the Spring in Paris Collection. I hope you will enjoy the visit.

Spring Fever

I'm almost finished with the latest pair of gloves. I was sure all the Red Sox/Yankees games would help me knit faster but I think spring fever is distracting me.

In lieu of knitting content here are two photos of Bubbles. She really is difficult to photograph unlike my last rabbit Peaches who was a camera hog. One thing I noticed is that when I get out the camera Bubbles always puts her ears back as in the photo below. She looks a little concerned, doesn't she?

In this photo I was trying to get an Easter type photo of a bunny and a basket and I added the greens to get her interested. I actually thought she had lost some weight but in this photo she still looks quite pudgy.

Anniversaries

This weekend, Mr. SockPixie and I will be celebrating our marriage anniversary, and Mr. SockPixie has planned a surprise little trip for us which means that I will not be able to update my new colorways. (It will be done on Sunday April 11.)

March and April are busy months for us, with birthdays, anniversaries and departures for France!