we are unamused.

For about a month, I've been chipping away at the February Lady Sweater when I have a few minutes. I'm using Sirdar's Sublime Cashmere Merino Silk Aran for it, which I got at a huge discount at Sock Summit. I used six skeins for a shawl and liked it, so I decided to go ahead and do the FLS with another color as planned.

It's lovely soft yarn, with great drape. Coil spun, so it has a bit of a tendency to snag. But the main problem is that out of the seven skeins that I've used so far, all of which are allegedly from the same dyelot, two are much lighter. I tried to hide the transition in the lace section, but it's still fairly obvious. I can't look for more yarn from the same dyelot, because what if I just end up with more of the lighter stuff? Alternating skeins doesn't work, as it makes it look sort of striped.

A little disappointing, I have to say. I've got 10 skeins in DK weight left (yes, it was a *very* good sale) but now I'm a little apprehensive about starting another project with this. Color consistency was not at all an issue with the shawl, so I don't know how this third batch will turn out.

Rogue update

I'm pleasantly surprised by how fast this is going. I've never made an adult-sized sweater before, so I was steeling myself for months of work. But after just a week, I'm almost ready to split for the armhole shaping.



The yarn, Queensland Kathmandu Aran, is really lovely to work with. I read some complaints about VM and yarn breakage, but I haven't had a problem with either. Yes, there's a little VM, like one or two pieces per 50g skein. I don't think it's a dealbreaker.

My one concern is about the cables. The stitch definition is fine now, if not ideal for the cables; the fabric has a lot of drape and the yarn itself is a little fuzzy, not smoothly plied. I'm wondering what's going to happen after blocking. Maybe I should have used size 7 needles and made the sweater the next size up. Other people were using size 6 needles with this yarn and pattern. I don't know; I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

yarn review: Gaia organic merino

This yarn is a favorite among the soaker/longies knitting crowd, and for good reason. It's wonderfully soft--glides right through your fingers, like silk. An aran weight yarn, so it knits up quickly. My gauge on size 8 needles is about 4.4 stitches to the inch. Takes dye in a somewhat muted way, not as bright as BFL or Clun Forest (the brightest of them all), but the lovely sheen of the yarn adds an interesting depth. One of my personal favorites.

And the sport weight! It could make a sock knitter out of anyone. A lot of yarn comes through my door, but this is the stuff that I want to keep just so I can pet it. Soft as a kitten.

This is my Flying Fish colorway on the aran weight. I dyed it for the Farmers' Market theme at Venus Vanguard, in honor of those kooky fish-throwing guys at Pike Place Market. I think the colors work really well with how the merino accepts dye.

unraveling ribbing

I've always wondered if I could just unravel a waistband on a pair of pants, if I wanted to add some inches to the rise. When a good customer of mine commented on how much she liked a pair of longies I had for sale, but that the rise was a little too short, I figured it was my chance to find out.

First I unraveled the cast-on edge. It took a while, but I was prepared for that. My hope was that it would unravel pretty readily after that. Alas, that was not the case. The ribbing was K2P2, so every two stitches, I had to draw the loose end through a loop. (Should have taken photos, but at the time I was just trying to get it over with.) Of course, the more stitches I unraveled, the longer the loose end was, and the time it took to draw the extra yarn through got longer and longer. I spent about 30 minutes undoing two rows, then gave up and cut off the waistband with a pair of scissors. Unraveling stockinette was a snap--just like unraveling it from the other end of the work.

I picked up stitches and added about half an inch, then did the waistband in matching semi-solid yarn. Also added some length to the inseam, but that was a really simple fix. No heroic measures necessary.

Before:


After:


These longies are knitted from Lindon merino, dyed by Three Irish Girls in the Barrett colorway (trim is Murphy, also by TIG). I love how Lindon merino feels--so thick and cottony and marvelously soft. Sadly, I don't like knitting with it. I think I need 5.25 mm needles, but knitting needles only come in 5.0 and 5.5 mm sizes. I'm always fiddling with my tension as I knit and can never quite get comfortable. I also don't seem to have the right knack for dyeing it. It makes me sad, since I want so much to love it, but we appear to have irreconcilable differences.

Zen Child longies, plus some gloves

I forgave the Full Belly Farm yarn for some of its imperfections after I blocked the longies. They smoothed out wonderfully and have a fantastic texture. Look Ma, no lumps!



Don't you just love the colorway? It's even better in person. I should've taken a closeup photo so you could see the subtle shifts in color, from turquoise to emerald to seaweed and aqua.

Denise of Zen-Child also sent me a rainbow colorway to work up. At first some of the colors were pooling all on one side of the pants or the other, but once I unraveled and decreased the total number of stitches for the body, the color distribution evened itself out nicely. This pair is knitted with Marr Haven yarn, a non-certified organic merino/Rambouillet blend. It pills a bit and isn't as silky soft as other merinos, but has that plush, squishy feel that Targhee has. And I was struck by how lightweight it was, given that it's a heavy worsted yarn (my gauge was about 4.25 sts/inch). The longies weighed 6.25 oz, compared to the FBF longies at 7.5 oz. Same size, similar gauges, but more than an oz difference.



I also cranked out a pair of fingerless gloves. I looked around for some grey machine washable yarn, but didn't see any that were quite the color I was looking for, so I dyed some aran BFL in a grey somewhere between medium and charcoal. My original thought was to do a pair with K4 P1 ribbing, but I got sidetracked by Soy Silk's fingerless glove pattern (link goes to a PDF file), with pseudo cables on the cuff and up the back. I knitted one glove and didn't care for it--the pseudo cables had an inverted pyramid shape that made the glove sort of baggy under the palm, and the way the pattern is written (or possibly the way my hand is shaped), the cables weren't centered on the back of my hand. Scrapped it and experimented with a baby cable cuff, then scrapped that and went back to my original concept.

yarn review: Full Belly Farm

Denise of Zen Child dyed some Full Belly Farm yarn and sent it to me to knit up. It's a two-ply, organic worsted yarn that is made from Rambouillet, Lincoln, Suffolk, and merino wool.

I love the dye job that Denise did--a lovely, variegated, and completely NON-POOLING colorway of greens and blues. But the yarn itself? Not so much. There isn't much stretch to the yarn, so instead of gliding over my Addis, I had to pull and tug the knitted work every few stitches, which really slowed me down. It was also somewhat thick and thin, so it's got that nubby thing going on. It doesn't drape smoothly, like most of the yarns I've been using lately--makes a very stiff fabric. It's a little bit like a lumpy, nonstretchy Targhee.

And the VM! All the comments I've ever seen about this yarn mention the significant amount of vegetative matter. I'm convinced they must encourage the sheep to wallow in brambles, because I've never seen so much VM in a skein of yarn. Last year I had some fleeces from non-coated, free-to-roam Clun Forest sheep processed and spun for me, and have knitted up about eight or 10 skeins of it. One skein of FBF has probably double the amount of VM from those skeins combined.

And to top it off, instead of each skein weighing 4 oz like the label says, the two skeins knitted up only weigh 7.25 oz, and that's with a 12" circular needle still stuck in it. I used every bit of the yarn that I got and am three rows short of finishing the longies (wahhh!), though if I'd gotten the full amount of yarn, I should have had about 60 yards to spare. I'm not a fan, I'm afraid.