Author: kountingsheep

Jenny is a mother of 3 living in sunny Arizona, where it’s often too hot for all the knitting and crocheting she does. She’s been playing with yarn for over 20 years, and not a day passes that she’s not working on a project. She has a passion for designing and seeks to make patterns that provide creativity and comfort through handmade.

The Tales We Weave

Published on by kountingsheep

It feels good to be weaving again, since my last (and only) time on my loom was over Christmas break. My first scarf, although I love it so much, was full of mistakes and a wee bit shorter than I anticipated. Luckily I’m short, so it doesn’t really matter, and luckily I’m learning to live with imperfections (even though the perfectionist in me vehemently objects). I’m excited to see my newest weaving project coming along much better than the first.

Last Friday marked 3 years since my sister Heather’s death. I took the day off from work and had some time in the afternoon to myself. I felt listless, like I couldn’t make up my mind on what project to work on. Lately I’ve had the urge to KNIT.ALL.THE.THINGS, so there’s been a lot of project-starting and not a lot of project-finishing. Since none of my current projects seemed like the right thing, I decided to pull out my weaving loom and start weaving a new scarf. I pulled some yarn out of my stash that I got on my birthday back in 2008 that I’ve been struggling to fit with just the right pattern. As soon as I saw those skeins, it finally clicked: weaving. It’s like they’ve been waiting all this time for just this moment when I would have a loom and need yarn in just this weight to weave.

The other special thing about this yarn is that my sister Heather was there when it was purchased. It felt appropriate to remember good memories as I warped the loom, wrapped the shuttle bobbins, and then begin weaving. After perusing some pictures of weaving projects done by others, I realized that plaid is actually a lot easier than I imagined. It is created by alternating colors on both the warp (vertical yarns when looking at the loom) and the weft (the yarn that goes back and forth horizontally when looking at the loom). When done at the right intervals, it creates the little squares of color. I always feel so clever when something ridiculously easy looks ridiculously difficult.

This scarf already has a special story, and I can’t wait to finish weaving it and take it off the loom for the first time to see just how it came out.

Honey Cowl & Psalm 34

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I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together! I sought the Lord, and He answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints, for those who fear Him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. (Psalm 34:1-10)
 
 {Honey Cowl
US size 6 needles
My handspun yarn, “Green Gables” 472 yards}

When I was knitting this Honey Cowl, I was reading and praying through Psalm 34 (the first half posted above). I can’t help but think of it now every time I see or wear this project. Usually a specific memory, prayer, season of life is attached to each of my projects–for example, with baby blankets, it tends to be prayers for the new baby. For this project, it happens to be a psalm. There’s just something about working on a project with my hands that helps me remember things, the same way that writing helps me to remember too. More than just yarn goes into my handmade projects.

Photo Friday: Purple Lace

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My new Josephine shawl on the needles. Loving the purple lace. My first time doing a lace garter stitch pattern and one that has patterning on every row. Now that the chart is memorized, it’s time to just knit knit knit.

Home-Making

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My roommate and I are settled into our new apartment now, and it is truly starting to feel like home, now that all the boxes are unpacked and the furniture arranged and things are actually hanging up on the walls. Since we wanted to entertain right away, it was definitely great incentive to get everything set up as quickly as possible. We haven’t even been in our apartment two weeks yet, and already we’ve had people over 3 times. I love having a place to extend hospitality and just hang out with friends.

Our spacious apartment (read: over 1200 sq feet! no joke!) is great for having people over, and great for accommodating two adult roommates (with lots of stuff, since we are well passed the teenage years). I’ve also enjoyed my opportunity to use the kitchen and bake yummy things.

 

It’s also nice to live closer to each of our workplaces. Our church (where I work as a full-time secretary) is literally less than 2 miles away, so I’m able to come home for lunch. It’s great having the flexibility to do a load of laundry or empty the dishwasher or just watch a little television (while knitting, of course) on my lunch break. And now that I’ve cut down my commute time from almost an hour a day to about 10 minutes, I’m able to squeeze in more time for yarn, even with the added task of making dinner every night.

 

And I truly underestimated how nice it would be to have 2 separate closets in my room. Clothes, etc in one, yarn in the other. My stash has never been so organized, or all in one place, and it makes me ridiculously happy.

Another thing I love about my room is that since I downsized to a twin bed, I’m able to use a quilt that my grandma and great-grandma made by hand. Growing up, my house was always very homey, so I’ve always wanted my place to feel the same way. Having plenty of handmade touches definitely does the trick.

Peacock

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I have such a backlog of finished projects from over the past couple of months that have yet to make it up on the blog. So since I’ve been in such a mood to spin yarn, I figured I’d start catching up by talking about a Christmas present I made for my best friend and soon-to-be-roommate.

In September last year, I spun up this yarn, as hinted at here. It was my first time spinning Blue-Faced Leicester, and it definitely was a very pleasurable spin, only taking 3 days to make the singles and 2-ply. I always love to see how different the spun up yarn looks compared to the fiber. In this case, it ended up brightening up the colors a bit.

{Peacock
4 oz BFL
Fractal Spun
2 ply, 32 WPI
516 yards
Started 21 Sept 2011
Finished 24 Sept 2011}

I knew that I would be knitting a shawl with this yarn, something with an Estonian pattern to it. I had several in mind, but ended up choosing the Echo Flower shawl, mainly because of the blossom stitch (makes up the main body of the shawl), which I love. It’s the same stitch that can be found in the Laminaria pattern, which was the first shawl I ever made and still to this day my favorite shawl. My bestie always compliments me on that shawl, so I knew I had to make hers with the same stitch.

{Peacock Shawl
US Size 5 Needle
Modifications include leaving out the nupps in the border pattern,
and doing a normal knit stitch down the spine instead of a twisted stitch
Started 24 Dec 2011
Finished 31 Dec 2011}

I used up every last yard for this shawl. I left the nupps out of the border pattern (I dislike nupps, and besides they are yardage pigs [aka use up a lot of yarn]). I was a bit worried as to how the colors would do with this stitch pattern, but I was pleased with how the fractal spinning helped create a nice graduated color effect. And I love how the edging border came out at the end of the triangle! Love that contrast of tight blossom stitches and more openwork lace.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I started this project with my best friend in mind, and that she is indeed my best friend, I would NOT have been able to give this beauty away. The softness, the slight sheen of the yarn, the shawl pattern, everything came out better than I had even imagined.

Up until yesterday, Peacock had been my best spun yarn. More to come on what yarn I now consider my best ever!

PS>We move into our new apartment tomorrow!!!

The Stash

Published on by kountingsheep
This will be my new front door in two weeks! I’ll be moving out of my parents’ house into my first apartment with my best friend at the end of the month. We are extremely excited, especially since this place will be much closer to our respective jobs for both of us, not to mention it’s exciting to be out on my own for the first time.
And on a yarn related note, I finally can say that my stash is officially Red Heart yarn free! Yes, I am a yarn snob now (no surprise, it’s been for several years now), and especially with living in an apartment, it was time to purge the yarns I wasn’t going to use anymore. This included all Red Heart and Caron Simply Soft; these yarns were what got me started into all this craziness that is fiber arts, but it’s time for a parting of the ways. I know these yarns will be moving to a happy home, just not mine.
I knew that my yarn stash was large, but there’s nothing like boxing it all up to show you just how large it truly is. Okay, so it’s not the largest stash in the world, nor is it large compared to a knitter who owns a house, but for someone in her mid-twenties with only one room to call her own, it could be considered on the large size. And there’s a reason why it’s called “stash,” because I literally had yarn stashed in every available nook and cranny. I tried boxing up all the yarn first, but every time I pulled out something else to pack, I’d find another spot where yarn was just sitting there, waiting to be found, which would then be followed by me saying, “Oh yeah, I remember putting that there!” 
I can say that the upside to having a large stash (well, I don’t really consider downsides to having a large stash either, only upsides, but I digress….) is that now that I’ll be living on an extremely tight budget, I can start working my way through all my wonderful yarn. As I was pulling out every skein of yarn I own, it was fun to think about all the projects I have planned and all the beautiful skeins that I’ve purchased over the years. I very rarely buy yarn just to buy it, I usually have a project in mind, so it definitely brought on a case of “KNIT.ALL.THE.THINGS!” The good news is, my new room will have 2 closets, yes read that, 2 closets! So now I can have one for clothing and one for yarn (and maybe that will help with keeping the stash all in one place). 
And although my roommate is aware of my fiber obsession (more aware than some of my other friends), I’m not sure she will truly realize the full extent of it until she actually lives with me!

Knitting Bag

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An obsession that goes well with fiber arts is an obsession for great project bags. For me, it helps to keep organized if I have a different bag for each project I’m working on. That way, I can look at an array of bags lined up in my room (don’t judge me!) and know on site what is in each one, making grabbing one quickly on my way out the door much easier. And I’m always on the lookout for things that make a great knitting bag (size–portability or large enough to hold an afghan; pockets, closures–zippers, snaps, drawstrings; lightweight, etc), and things that do not (velcro is bad!). Let’s just say there are actually very few bags that don’t make a great knitting bag.
One of my favorite little knitting bags is a muslin drawstring with a handle and this cute little brown silkscreen. I was just telling a friend yesterday that it’s the perfect size for small-medium travel projects. It can fit one to two rather large skeins of yarn, and right now I have an in-progress Honey Cowl residing in this bag. The drawstrings make it great to keep contents from falling out, while at the same time making access easy and no risk of accidentally zipping up the yarn or project in the zipper (can you tell I’ve done that before?). The handle is great because I don’t have to worry about carrying it by the drawstrings (for some reason, I don’t like that).
As I mentioned, I have my in-progress Honey Cowl in this bag, a project that has me completely charmed, especially since I’m using my own handspun. This yarn was the second one I had spun on my wheel, and it was such an improvement from the first. I’m actually quite surprised at how evenly I plied this yarn, despite it being only the third time plying. Part of being a great spinner is knitting with your own yarn to see things you do well and things that need improvement, and some things you just can’t tell until you actually start to knit with it. 
The other thing that makes this project charming is the fact that I knit on it while in Disneyland last weekend. I’ve never actually knit while in Disneyland, and I decided to make it my goal to do that this trip. I’ve always thought it was a good idea while waiting in line or waiting for a meal or waiting for a parade (there is a surprising amount of waiting to do in Disneyland), but never actually done it before. This time, I picked this project specifically since a) it’s knit in the round, so I don’t have to turn my knitting around each row, b) the pattern is easily to memorize and remember between breaks, and c) it’s still small enough to fit in a smallish bag and not add too much extra weight. (And yes, there were plenty of eye-rolls from my family as they saw me knitting at various times throughout our trip.)
I’m hoping to have this finished up soon so I can wear it, and so I can use my favorite little bag for yet another project.

Chevrons

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Just a quick post in between back-to-back weekend trips to California (last weekend for a fun conference with friends, this weekend for Disneyland with my family). Not only am I enjoying my little weekend getaways to California, but I’m also thoroughly enjoying working on this chevron baby blanket. I can’t remember the last time I was this mesmerized with a project I was knitting–I seriously do not want to stop! There have been plenty of patterns and projects that I’ve had a lovely time working on, but they always reach a point where I’m just ready to be done. Not the case with this project. I think I could seriously work on it forever. I’m actually feeling sad that I’ll finish it soon, but the good news is, I have plans to make another one.

Expect more chevron blankets in the future.

Color

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It’s no secret that I love color (I’m wearing red shoes today, which makes me very happy). All you have to do is look at my projects over the years, and you will find that there has been no shortage of color from this fiber enthusiast. But something I want to try and do this year is focus more intentionally on color pairing, namely, stepping outside my box of color combinations. I love these colors for inspiration (especially that Tangerine Tango, Pantone’s Color of 2012):
 
My first attempts at this will be in baby blankets. I’ve already purchased yarn for two baby blankets, using unconventional color palettes for baby boys. Not that the colors aren’t suitable for boys, but they typically aren’t the first “go-to” colors when knitting blankets. I’m also in love with bold solids right now, so I think I’ll be staying away from the variegated varieties of yarns and focusing in on the solids. 
 Another thing I’ve been latching onto more recently, especially since I started spinning, is natural colors. I’m in love with browns and cremes and greys right now, which is great because my current spinning project is a natural-creme-colored Jacob fleece. A great thing about natural colors is that you can pop some bold color with it for some modern flair (grey and bright yellow, yes! brown and a rich red, absolutely! lime green and white, love it!).

So playing with color is just one of my many goals this year, which luckily for me, isn’t a very hard goal at all.

Mallard

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I posted several months ago (here) about one of my favorite yarns that I’ve spun, called “Mallard.” It didn’t take very long for me to dive into this skein once the weather started getting colder. I knew I had wanted to make a hat with this yarn, so I was absolutely thrilled when the yardage amount ended up being enough for not only a hat, but also a pair of fingerless mitts and a cowl.

{Mallard Tam
Pattern: Ysolda’s Snapdragon Tam from Whimsical Little Knits 2
Used half the skein, approx. 232 yards
US Size 5 needles}

Love the color changes. The colors are a bit richer, brighter than in these pics. But spinning definitely toned down the color palette, as did the knitting.

I’m the one in the middle, wearing the hat. You can just barely see it.

I think the pattern may have been just a little bit too intricate for the yarn, but the cabling detail is still visible, so that makes me happy. For the mitts, I used the coordinating Snapdragon Mitts pattern, and again, I think the detail work gets lost in the colors. But I don’t want to reknit them, and they are very cozy to wear!

After finishing the mitts, I had just enough yarn leftover to make a little cowl. Since this is precious handspun, I wanted to make something that would be close to my skin, as well as use up every last yard of yarn (which I did). Luckily I found some coordinating sock yarn in my stash in a nice neutral brown to finish out this simple feather and fan lace stitch cowl (which I finished and wore on Christmas Eve).
Knitting in the car on Christmas Eve

I just love knitting with my own handspun! I think one of my goals this year will be to weave something with handspun.